Track by Track Thoughts on The Eels' "Electro-Shock Blues"

Sometime before the first of the year I want to post about all the things I've discovered this year (e.g. red onions, oatmeal, cigars) both positive and negative. On the top of the list, hands-down, will be the Eels. I have no idea how the Eels escaped my attention for so many years, but after stumbling on "I Can't Sleep" on the Shreck 2" soundtrack, I was hooked.

I'll address the Eels in more detail later, but tonight I want to focus exclusively on their (his? I mean, The Eels are more or less one guy's party, right?) 1998 masterpiece, Electro-Shock Blues. Allow me to recap the legend: Mark Everett, the driving force behind the Eels, lost his mother to cancer and his sister to suicide the year before the album was written and recorded. The album is a stark, raw document of Everett's experiences through that period, and I have to say, as someone who spent a couple months locked up as a teenager, because I was diagnosed as depressed, that this CD is the most accurate depiction I've ever heard of not only the desperation and hopelessness associated with psychiatric illness but also of the humor and resilence that can carry one through the darkness. Thank you, Mr. Everett, for a brilliant album.

I don't think this is the kind of CD to which you can listen, start to finish, very often. I also think the second half, the redemptive crawl out of the darkness, is more accessible than the first. Here's my track by track commentary on the CD. I don't mean to say these are definitive comments...I'm only trying to speak for what the songs mean to me.

1. Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor

This track seems to concern the initial shock of Everett's sister's ("Elizabeth", I would assume) death. It's a slow, somnabulant track, with sort of an unreal feel to it, the way you might react, I suppose, to hearing about someone's suicide out of the blue.

2. Going to Your Funeral Part I

Tight and edgy, with a low, distinct bass line, this song chronicles E's train of thought as he drives to his sister's funeral...insular and painful to hear, almost.

3. Cancer for the Cure

Although this was the lead single, this song always feels a bit misplaced, if you ask me. I like it, but it rocks all over and I can't quite figure out where the song's context. I sometimes wonder if this was E's idea of a follow up to "Novacaine for the Soul".

4. My Descent into Madness

E sort of seems to let go in this CD...the "la la la" chorus leaves him untethered, kind of nuts, an idea reinforced by the strait jacket and mental hospital imagery.

5. 3 Speed

This is the first truly brilliant song on the disc. E, over a simple guitar/string riff, emerges from the haze for a moment or two and tries to make sense of the surroundings ("why won't you just tell me what's going on?") before articulating a desire for the simple and concrete.

6. Hospital Food

Kind of a jazz riff on the psychiatrict hospital experience. I don't know. I thought the food was pretty good. I can still taste the lasagna.

7. Electro-Shock Blues

The title track nails that lost, desperate feeling when you know you're nuts ("I am ok...I am ok...I'm not ok") with a clipped piano sample and not much else. Terrifying.

8. Efil's God

Apparently this song's backing track was created from the a previous song, "Dog's Life". This is where you first get the sense the album is going to turn away from hopelessness and start the ascent away from madness, if you will. E seems to give up in that hard to explain way when someone makes a conscious choice to accept their illness, condition, whatever, and live what what they've got.

9. Going to Your Funeral Part II

A simple, spare instrumental with strings and horns...actually quite optimistic and Coplandesque. This is where the second half of the disc really materializes.

10. Last Stop: This Town

This song is more important for its energy that its lyrics. Maybe I say that because I can't figure out exactly what the song is about other than picking up and moving on, or maybe someone returning home...like I said, I don't quite get it, but the music is infectious and the sense of possibility becomes palpable.

11. Baby Genius

Some tape loops and a quick, mumbled lyric about what seems to be forgiveness and acceptance ("Didn't we have some good times/After all is said and done?"). This seems to be a transitional tune between the bouncy feeling of track number ten and the acoustic brilliance of track number twelve.

12. Climbing Up To the Moon

Man, this song is great. This is where E asserts that he's not taking Elizabeth's path, if you will, but harnessing the energy to live his life in the face of death and depression. I'm surprised no one has covered this song, actually...sooner or later somebody will.

13. Ant Farm

I'm not sure if E's talking to a girl, his sister, or his mother in this song. I think it's his mom, because of track #14. If I'm right, this is him reconciling his feelings about his mother before she gets ready to die.

14. Dead of Winter

You can hear Dylan's influence on this one (E covers some Dylan in concert, I hear), but for the love of Christ, don't let that scare you away. It took me a while to get the feel of this track, but now it runs through my mind a lot. It almost reminds me of The Replacement's "Here Comes A Regular" in that it uses the isolation of winter as a box in which E can think (in this case, about his Mom's death, in the Replacement's case, about alcoholism). Spare and simple, E says goodbye to his mom. Heartbreaking.

15. The Medication's Wearing Off

This song plays like someone waking up in the morning. Between the acknowledgement that he'll have to feel the pain ("gonna hurt not a little/a lot") and control his own destiny ("Start to be what they want you to be/and you see yourself as they see you"), a sense of normalcy and closure, as much as possible, anyway, emerges.

16. P.S. You Rock My World

The album's closer is a declaration of E's desire to live without fear and baggage. You can't often be this direct ("Maybe it's time to live") without sounding trite, but the album's collective weight, and the track's inherent sincerity, make it possible here. This song is one of the best closers I have ever heard.

That's it for now...if you're one of my friends, reading tonight, shoot me an email and I'll send you a copy of the disc. Thanks for reading.