Souljacker : Eels : Review : Rolling Stone

When the Eels debuted in the mid-Nineties, being a tortured artist in the slippery world of alternative rock implied some level of ironic distance. God forbid that an alt-rocker directly admit to having feelings -- at least not without a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Eels frontman E does his share of winking, but his real-life tragedies -- within a two-year period, he lost his sister to suicide and his mother to cancer -- have kept the singer and songwriter more honest than your average Nineties moper. In 1998, E dealt head-on with his personal loss on the Eels' stunning album, Electro-Shock Blue. On Souljacker, the band's fourth release, he takes a hard-rocking, no-holds-barred look at the moral bankruptcy of society at large. From the blues-based grit and spit of the opening track to the messy distortion throughout, Souljacker launches an all-out attack on familiar Eels themes -- insecurity, loneliness, despair -- but this time from a more universal standpoint. Over squalling guitars, fuzzy surf lines, loping break beats and lush strings, E spins tales of small-town misfits searching for meaning in a media-driven world. The hairy protagonist of "Dog Faced Boy" gets taunted at school and bitterly laments, "Ma won't shave me/Jesus can't save me." Behind a shuffling Bo Diddley beat in "Souljacker 1," E examines the mind of a fed-up, Columbine-like high school student: "Johnny don't like the teacher/Johnny don't like the school/One day Johnny's gonna do something/To show 'em he's nobody's fool -- oh, yeah!" There are some spare, delicate moments -- the lovely, string-drenched "Fresh Feeling," the folky "Woman Driving, Man Sleeping" - but for the most part, the Eels have pulled out all the stops on Souljacker.

MARK KEMP
(RS 892 - March 28, 2002)