Rating My CD's: Love of the Loveless

19. Eels -- Shootenanny!

I first encountered Mark Oliver Everett, aka E, the man behind the Eels, whilst digging through my wife's iTunes collection, and enjoying "Novocaine for the Soul." I read somewhere that E was a bluesier, more introspective version of Beck, so in the first flush months of having my own iTunes, I downloaded Electro-Shock Blues, which has never been an easy listen. Given the subject matter it drew from (the suicide of E's sister and cancer diagnosis of his mother), it hardly should be, and it's leaden melancholy still makes for better listening than The Soft Bulletin, which I bought around the same time.

In all honesty, I'd really first encountered him in a Spin review of Shootenanny!, the content of which I thankfully do not recall. I liked the name (perhaps confusing them with proto-punk geniuses the Electric Eels), and liked the album title, and liked the none-more-black cover. So when I heard "Novocaine," I decided to delve more deeply, and thought an album called Electro-Shock Blues would be a good set of immersion songs. But Shootenanny! was always the goal purchase.

The two albums differ so much as to represent an artist's full straddle. Whereas ESB cannot see a way off the bathroom floor, out of the long dark Monday of the soul, this disc is a punchy Saturday morning of hope. Even the mellower tracks like "Good Old Days" offer a draught not of despair but of grit, of the promise that whatever happens, these can be the good old days.

Perhaps the best mix of punch and gentilty, "Love of the Loveless" bespeaks exactly this quiet determined hopefulness:

Don't got a lot of time
Don't give a damn
Don't tell me what to do
I am the man 

It's not exactly "Mannish Boy," and it's not exactly the Yardbirds, either. But it draws on the same steely eye with which the blues surveys the grim landscape. The song proceeds to call upon God to shine his light on the Love of the Loveless, this being the truest and realest love to be found. Strength and power in pain.

The flipside of this cheeriness is the reverb-drenched "Agony," which promises that pain will be the only real result of all your labors, toward the light or others. "Rock Hard Times" then doubles back, the lift of the melody and arrangement belying the gloom of the lyrics.

It goes on like this, mixing unbearable lightness with soothing misery. "Restraining Order Blues" may be the question mark at the heart of the record. It could be an ironic laying-out of stalker self-justification, or it could be exactly as sincere as it sounds. I can't tell, and having "Lone Wolf" follow it does nothing to elucidate the mystery.

Ultimately, Shootenanny! ends hopefully, with the promise that someone loves you. This is not at all blues, strictly speaking. Blues is supposed to derive sustenance from the clarity of of the view of one's pain, not from the relief of it, if you want to be doctrinaire about it. But being doctrinaire about the blues seems the greater violation than promising that you're gonna make it through.



Grade: LL