Eels: Daisies of the Galaxy [Clean] : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Since 1992, when he released his well-dressed, song-conscious debut album, A Man Called E, the laboratory pop of singer-songwriter E has grown slicker even as it has slid sideways. 1996's Beautiful Freak and 1998's Electro-shock Blues, albums that E made with his trio, Eels, were all about vagueness, whimsy and depression voiced in sleekly updated Beatles and Beach Boys soundscapes. Daisies of the Galaxy is another thing altogether: Gone are the samples and sonic fractures that caused some to label Eels a plusher Beck. In their place is a deceptively flowing, folk-happy directness.

In E's world it still rains a lot, as in "It's a Motherfucker," a Randy Newman-esque piano ballad that mulls imperfect love, and "Something Is Sacred," a great song in which E walks into a mall, smells "piss and beer and Guess?" and gets concerned that he will end up lying under the highway overpass, "wearing newspapers for pants." Also in this mode is "Selective Memory," begun in falsetto, a slow wrestle with time that's virtually an homage to Neil Young's After the Goldrush. The dire title song longs for an almost Disney-esque clarity and escape.

But for most of Galaxy's lows, a kaleidoscopic high arises. "Grace Kelly Blues" is a countryish lope that includes court fanfare and references that old-line eating establishment Hot Dog on a Stick. "If you're small and on a search / I got a feeder for you to perch on" goes a grinning line in "I Like Birds," a frankly randy stomp. On the acoustic-driven "Wooden Nickels," E advises that "the devil of a time awaits you" as he's buoyed by strings and steel guitar. Daisies of the Galaxy is a stylistic leap for Eels, but it's more about other kinds of leaps -- from the tyrannies of time, love and Hot Dog on a Stick. (RS 836)

JAMES HUNTER