Eels

Electro-Shock Blues

Great, but may depress the hell out of you

Review Score:

(10/10)
Usually the best concept albums are once drawn from pure emotion. Using music as his venting post, E recorded to recover from the deaths of his mother and sister. The result is simply brilliant.

The opening track is quite possibly the most saddening, sporting the most haunting imagery in a song title that I can remember. The subsequent tracks, all through the end of PS You Rock My World (with exception to Baby Genuis- I'm just not all that crazy about it), are all winners, with the major highlight going to "My Descent Into Madness" with its understated "La-la-la"s and repeating violins.

If you aren't familiar with the Eels, than this is the album to start with; and if you have Beautiful Freak, Daisies, and/or Souljacker, but not this, than you are missing E at his peak performance.

(Also a side note- E is consistently compared to Beck and I'd like to take this time to explain why. First off, E and Beck both have almost identical voices. They also are experimental in their sounds and layers- though Beck is the much more experimental of the two. What seperates them is the Eels are more subtle with their style, while Beck tends to be outragous and more and more hip-hop driven.)

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