Eels

EELS
Mr. E Explores Desire, Duality, and Beards on "Hombre Lobo"
By Andrew Clayman
Published in Alarm Magazine, November 2009

“After spending the last four years basically living in the past, the only thing I could do now was to get back to the future,” says E (aka Mark Oliver Everett), the middle-aged maestro behind L.A. alt-rock underdogs Eels. It’s been a long wait since the last Eels studio effort, 2005’s acclaimed double-album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, but E spent the time embarking on what might best be described as a “prolific hiatus.” This included the release of a live Eels CD and DVD, a greatest hits compilation, a b-sides collection, a BBC documentary, and a pretty damn inspiring autobiography (Things the Grandchildren Should Know).

“I’m glad I did all that stuff, but I can’t say that looking back is much fun,” E says. “I mainly just enjoyed finishing it all, because it did serve a purpose for me. Personally, and as an artist, it freed me up to close the past up, so now the decks are clear and I can get on with things.”

The product of this fresh start for E and Eels is Hombre Lobo, a record that doesn’t signal a stylistic evolution so much as a psychoanalytical one. Packaged with the subtitle “12 Songs of Desire,” Hombre Lobo finds E’s fascination with duality and internal conflict at an all-time high, played out through his album-wide portrayal of the titular werewolf, a character he’s visited a few times in the past. According to E, though, the project had its roots in a hygiene-related epiphany.

“I looked in the mirror when I was brushing my teeth one morning,” he says, “and I saw my gigantic beard, and I thought, ‘this beard doesn’t really suit the kind of music I’m working on right now.’ So I was about to cut it off, and then it occurred to me at the last second, ‘well, why don’t I just make music that does suit the beard?’ [laughs] And so, that was the start of it all really.”

From there, E decided to re-inhabit the role of the “Dog-Faced Boy,” whom he had introduced in the song of the same name on Eels’ 2001 album, Souljacker.

“I thought, ‘well, he’s older now, and the best he could hope for is to have grown into a werewolf as an adult.’ That started me thinking about what a werewolf’s life was like and what his wants and desires might be.”

As one might expect from a concept album about a werewolf, Hombre Lobo has two very distinct personalities. In a lot of ways, this is true of every Eels record, since E routinely writes his share of heartbroken pop ballads and foot-stomping blues-rock romps. The difference with Hombre Lobo is the strategy in sequencing. Track one, “Prizefighter,” is a confident, aggressive mating call straight from the playbook of Howlin’ Wolf (no relation), but it gives way to the slow, sad yearning of “The Look You Give That Guy,” which, in turn, transitions into the “Girl I want it bad!” chorus of the up-tempo “Lilac Breeze.” The pattern continues this way throughout the album, creating a very unusual flow, but a very effective one in light of the themes in mind.

“Yeah, there’s definitely a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Werewolf thing going on,” E says, “where the more tender side of desire is reflected more from Dr. Jekyll’s point of view, and the werewolf comes out when things get a little more extreme and the passion comes to a head.”

Appropriately, then, Hombre Lobo delivers some of the darkest and sweetest moments of E’s substantial catalog, from the Black Keys style rawness of “Tremendous Dynamite” to the tender closing track “Ordinary Man,” which finds our werewolf protagonist coming to terms with and even taking pride in what he is.

“You could look at all these songs, in some sense, as sales pitches from this guy who’s trying to convince the object of his desires that he’s the one for her,” E says. “And with the last track, he’s taking a different approach at his sales pitch and saying, ‘hey, you seem like a smart cookie. You should actually see that my differences are an asset.’

E insists his own struggles with desire are minimal these days, but he realizes that many listeners will see plenty of parallels between the singer and his furry alter ego.

“I mentioned the idea of this album to a friend of mine,” he recalls, “and I explained it as basically twelve songs from the point of view of a horny old werewolf. So she said, ‘Oh, so it’s your most honest album to date then.’ [laughs] I don’t know what to make of that, but there you go.”