EELS - Hombre Lobo

Eels frontman and songwriter E penned a collection of intimate, often gentle, and very revealing songs called Blinking Lights and Other Revelations. It reflected songs of personal experience and the human spirit. But E, aka Mark Oliver Everett, never seems to look at things the same way twice. In many ways, Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire is the mirror image of that album. And, as Everett himself claims, this one is more about animal instinct. That's fair enough as far as it goes, but this recording, while reflecting a more primal side of human experience as it engages the primacy of desire, actually recalls -- and feels like an extension of -- the song "Dog Faced Boy" from Souljacker. That kid, caught in his loneliness because of his difference, seems to be speaking -- albeit as a grownup -- through many of the songs here. His difference is both his gift and his curse and he understands both sides. He's finding his loneliness to be both the bane of his existence and his strength to survive and succeed in finding love no matter what. His protagonist, through thoroughly human, is still regarded as an animal because of his hirsute appearance, and he deals with that in these 12 songs with tenderness, rage, and reckless abandon. The sound of the album seems divided in two, the brazenly rockist set betraying the side of animal instinct in all its guises, from anger to wanton lust, desperation, and swaggering self-confidence, with E using resolute raw, distorted roots rock ("Prizefighter"); piledriving, careening garage rock ("Liliac Breeze"and "What's a Fella Gotta Do"); howling raucous blues ("Tremendous Dynamite"); and the brilliant boasting pomposity portrayed by distorted pop/rock ("Beginner's Luck").

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