Track Listing

1. Prizefighter
2. That Look You Give That Guy
3. Lilac Breeze
4. In My Dreams
5. Tremendous Dynamite
6. The Longing
7. Fresh Blood
8. What's A Fella Gotta Do
9. My Timing Is Off
10. All The Beautiful Things
11. Beginner's Luck
12. Ordinary Man

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1347 in Music
• Released on: 2009-06-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 40 minutes

CD Description
Eels is the ever-changing project of singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mark Oliver Everett (aka E). The band’s first record since 2005’s critically acclaimed Blinking Lights And Other Revelations, Hombre Lobo was recorded entirely at E’s studio in Los Angeles with Koool G Murder (bass, keyboards and guitar) and Knuckles (drums and percussion). E has embarked on a number of projects since Blinking Lights and Other Revelations including his acclaimed autobiography Things the Grandchildren Should Know and the BBC produced multiple-award winning Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives documentary film about E and his quantum physicist father, Hugh Everett III. However, Hombre Lobo marks a welcome return to music for the songwriter.

Customer Reviews

The Best of the Eels sound without being a Greatest Hits compilation
Hombre Lobo is the seventh studio album from the Eels. It arrives in the wake of a B sides compilation and the Live in the Town Hall with Strings releases. The last studio album released was Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, which reached critical acclaim but left me wondering what on Earth was going on.

I am delighted with Hombre Lobo. It is absolutely the best Eels album I could have hoped for. E has put together a wonderful portfolio of melodies. There is a really strong sense of the journey that the Eels have been on, and influences have been drawn from all their recording experiences.

"The Look That You Gave That Guy" brings us the quiet Eels of the Beautiful Freak days, and "Beginners Luck" reminds me of the songs released for the Shrek soundtracks. "Lilac Breeze" is reminiscent of Shootenanny, and "The Longing" takes me back to the Electro Shock Blues, without depressing me too much. The Daisies of the Galaxy are represented by "My Timing is Off". "Tremendous Dynamite" is the hardest rocking song that I have ever had the pleasure to enjoy from the Eels. I can't stop listening to it on repeat. It is dirty rock at its best, and is the song that Souljacker wished it had on it.

That said, I feel that the progression in the Eels is also shown in this album. "Fresh Blood" is an excellent innovative track, which harnesses a slightly more electronic sound than we are used to, and has a simply electrifying 'chorus' which is best listened to as loud as you can bear it.

I can't recommend this strongly enough to Eels fans. It is simply quintessential Eels; you couldn't call yourself a fan if you didn't enjoy this.

Desire and delivery
Bloodthirsty like a werewolf, desire hasn't been a topic that Mark Oliver Everett has shied away from over his fifteen years as an alternative-rock pioneer. Although his songwriting has always remained exposed and generous in honesty, never has a man sounded so out in the open as E does on this concept album on that very subject. It's difficult to fully gain awareness of the actual attitude E takes towards seducing sexy ladies, with the lyrical content varying between a desperate, lust-filled man and one so wounded that he can't continue. Nevertheless, throughout `Hombre Lobo', he manages to take your breath away.

Strictly speaking, this is a concept album, but you need not know that. Instead you could interpret this record as a truthful collection of Eels' most naked accounts on seeking love. A proverbial pendulum switches musically and personally between the obnoxious, edgy numbers ('Tremendous Dynamite') and the beautiful, damaged ballads ('The Longing'). Each track maintains the accessibility factor that comes with Eels, but the variety feels like something new, almost on a level of the diverse nature of `Souljacker' in 2001. It's in the words he sings that E truly excels. The most poignant moment of the aching account `The Longing' is the revelation "I think she knows, that when I say that I would die for her, it's not just words, I really would" and on the flipside of that, there's the dark, almost stalker-like account of the itch on `Fresh Blood', which suddenly opens up with the declarative "I'm more alone than I've ever been, help me out of this shape I'm in". Be it a concept album, be it E's words or not, those words still get to the very core of your thinking.

But at one point it does strike you that Everett might truly be a lonely man, not some playboy with a libido. His life has always been bleakly surrounded by death and loss. It's not the first time that as a songwriter, he's become so honest with his audience, but with that thought in the back of your head, it makes `Hombre Lobo' a unique and striking account. You might think you've heard the likes of `My Timing Is Off' and `All The Beautiful Things' before, each clasping to a traditional Eels formula of summertime blues, major chords and an uplifting atmosphere, but lurking inside is something not so commonplace, something momentous.

Less Is More
No fuss or frills on Mr Everett and his merry minstrels'
new release 'Hombre Lobo'.
The simple formula is a highly effective one.
A shining example of less sometimes being more.

He has an ear for a good tune, no doubt about that
and there are twelve of them here.
The best of the bunch are genuinely affecting.
Mr Everett has a true melancholic's understanding
of the value of pathos and understatement.
'In My Dreams' and 'The Longing' are both exquisite examples
of his fragile art. Love and loss balanced on a knife edge.

'Lilac Breeze' and 'Fresh Blood' provide a rough-edged rocking
counterpoint to the album's largely reflective and downbeat mood.
There is a howling wolf loose in the latter ( one of my American
cousins perhaps ? ) stalking through an effectively realised
B-movie landscape.

'All The Beautiful Things' is a whimsically perfect little gem of a song.

Top marks, however, go to 'The Look You Give That Guy' a
composition which manages to articulate a moment of lost
opportunity as well as any described before him by Randy Newman
and 'Ordinary Man', a simple and touching song which brings
the album to a sad but emotionally satisfying conclusion.

Mr Murder (nee Logsdon) and Mr Knuckles (nee Brown) provide their
leader with economical but very strong musical support throughout.

A canny, well-constructed and perfectly paced little album. I loved it.

Recommended.