Album Review: Eels- The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett

A large bummer in my life is the fact that I have a legit day job, and that I write these pieces in the evenings or on other free time I happen to have. To get a better feel for the records before I sit down to write about them, I will often listen to them in my office, at what has been deemed a “respectable” volume level, using my Google Play account.

After…obtaining…a copy of the new Eels album, The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett, and uploading said copy into my Google Play account, when I went to listen to it, I noticed it had been tagged as “General Indie Rock.” And I thought to myself, “Well yes, that makes perfect sense.”

Kudos to Everett, or “E” as he is most commonly known, for surviving in the game as long as he has. The Eels were a product of the post-Nirvana, major label “alternative rock” boom in the mid 1990s. Beautiful Freak, the band’s 1996 debut LP was one of the first releases for the fledgling Dreamworks label, an imprint he managed to stay on until it folded in the early 2000s. As a band, the Eels have always had an ever changing sound, and to an extent, an ever changing line up. E has dabbled with introspective pop music, a “harder” rock sound, and even a little twang. The band’s last effort, Wonderful, Glorious, was released barely over a year ago. And now E has returned with the group’s 11^th full-length effort.

On the opening track to Wonderful, Glorious, a rather “big” sounding, straightforward rock record, E sang, “I’m sick and tired of being complacent. I’m sick and tired of being a mouse.” On Cautionary Tales, it’s a bit of a reversal—over the half hour running time, E backpedals on that statement, creating a very hushed, rather morose, and (unfortunately) a somewhat forgettable “general indie rock” record.

The overall theme running throughout the course of Cautionary Tales is regret—“We’re goddamn fools,” E sings early on in “Lockdown Hurricane;” and then later on, it’s “I can’t keep repeating the mistakes of my life,” on the aptly titled “Mistakes of My Life.” And just take a look at some of the song titles that loosely tie the idea together: “Where I’m At,” “Where I’m From,” (one of the few tracks that picks the pace up a little as it shuffles along) and finally, “Where I’m Going.”

Now, this is not to say that E can’t do “remorseful” or whatever—he did it on arguably the band’s finest album, 1998’s Electro-Shock Blues, and then again 2010’s End Times. It’s just that this time around, something about it isn’t working.

Perhaps it’s that almost all of these songs kind of sound the same. Within the first couple of tracks on the record, there is little variation. You go from “Parallels,” to the earlier mentioned “Lockdown Hurricane,” and then by the time you get to “Agatha Chang,” you realize that you’ve gone through three tunes, with nothing making any one of them stand out from the others. And “A Swallow in The Sun” passes by without you even noticing.

Another thing that may be holding back Cautionary Tales is that while E has always called the shots within The Eels, Wonderful, Glorious felt like a record with a “band.” Here, it feels like The Eels are less a “band” and are being used as more of a “brand,” and that this is a Mark Oliver Everett solo album—somewhat similar to how Mark Kozelek still releases albums under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, even if some of them are just him, plucking way at his stupid acoustic guitar.

At times it can be a sparse record, but it does rely on lush orchestral arrangements. However, they aren’t enough to pull this out of the “general indie rock” doldrums. There are songs that go nowhere—like “Dead Reckoning,” and then there’s something like “Kindred Spirit,” a track that sounds like the kind of song E has written at least a hundred times before. Maybe E has now reached that point, 11 albums in, where he’s honed that sound that is “familiar to millions” (as Oasis aptly called a live album of theirs) and he can’t help but sound like himself.

This seems like a great time to make a horrible pun and say that unless you are a diehard Eels fan, proceed with caution (heh) on Cautionary Tales.  It maintains aspects of the whimsy and humor that Everett is known for in his songs, but it lacks the life and energy he is capable of.

The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett is out now, via E's own E Works imprint, and Vagrant Records.