Sometimes you need to risk parody to get to someplace deep. E, the singer, songwriter and guitarist of Eels, takes that risk on Electro-Shock Blues (see what I mean?) and pulls it off impressively. The album is E's anguished response to the deaths of several friends and to his becoming, as a press release for the album states, "the last living member of his family." It's grim stuff – "Waking up is harder when you want to die" is a characteristic sentiment – and if you're at all prone to giggling during the serious parts, you won't last ten minutes. But E presses into the darkness and finds a sound to suit his subject. The stark, introspective guitar-bass-drums arrangements are occasionally relieved by blasts of noise or elegantly colored string, horn and keyboard touches.

Amid the corpses, however, Electro-Shock Blues is suffused with a narcissistic self-loathing that even the world's horrors don't excuse. To his credit, E eventually tires of it: "Baby genius/Find a new ride," he sings at one point. By the album's close, E claws his way to a kind of existential peace: "A careful man tries to dodge the bullets/While a happy man takes a walk/And maybe it's time to live." He's kicked the Novocain for the soul and discovered that when you allow yourself to feel, not only pain but also pleasure can enter your life. (RS 798)

ANTHONY DECURTIS