January 15, 2010

Album review: Eels - End Times (Vagrant/Cooperative)

The soundtrack to a divorce lawyer's waiting room

8 / 10 We like to hope that lawyers specialising in heartbreak and bitter recriminations have Eels’ eighth studio effort, aka Mark ‘E’ Everett’s “divorce album”, looping in their waiting rooms. Still brimming with depressing song subjects (‘Electro-Shock Blues’ chronicled the death of each of his family members), E tells of talking to birds for lack of company (‘Little Bird’) and his eventual hermetic lifestyle (‘Mansions’). If Christmas has made you wish you could wink-bloody-murder your partner then this probably isn’t the first album you should whack on in 2010. If not, you’ll find Eels’ most revealing, autobiographical work-to-date to be the most beautiful break-up record since Beck’s ‘Sea Change’.

Camille Augarde

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Click here to buy Eels' 'End Times' from the Rough Trade shop.