Eels - Shootenanny

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Free Music Notes for Shootenanny

Free Music Review: yee-haw
Hit: 5 Stars

"All In A Day's Work" begins Shootenanny! with a slow snarl of an electric guitar before the ominous bass guitar and drums take over darkly marching towards E's distorted vocals. The disc's single, "Saturday Morning," ironically enough is the most typical EELS track on Shootenanny! with E's switch to an almost taunting falsetto on the chorus over Butch's pounding drums leading to a wall of distorted guitars. "Love Of The Loveless" and "Rock Hard Times" despite their titles are two of the album's most upbeat and best tracks. "Loveless" includes typical EELS signatures - that casio keyboard and a bridge that slows the song to a crawl; and "Rock Hard" is one of the best unheard pop songs of all of 2003 with its bouncy rhythm, its bright electric guitar, its whistling guitars, and its chorus of self-empowerment: "everybody knows these are rock hard times / i gotta make it through / these are rock hard times." One of my favorite couplets of last year is in "Dirty Girl" with its opening lyrics: "i like a girl with a dirty mouth / someone that i can believe." "Agony" could have been on the EELS 2001 tortured opus Electro-Shock Blues (the disc written, recorded, etc around the loss of E's family) with it's vibraphone trill giving way to solitary lower chords on the casio followed by Butch's overpowering drums and the fuzzed electric guitar cutting through it all.

"Restraining Order Blues" follows in a line of tradition for E - a song that ends in "Blues" but isn't quite bluesy: Electro-Shock Blues title track, Daisies Of The Galaxy's "Grace Kelly Blues" & "Mr. E's Beautiful Blues," Soujacker B-side "Rotten World Blues," the Holes soundtrack cut "Mighty Fine Blues," and the E-scored Levity soundtrack piece "Post-Flashback Blues." "Lone Wolf" features an organ that wouldn't be out of place if it were a pedal steel or slide guitar and "Wrong About Bobby" sounds vaguely Elliott Smith-ish. There's something lurking under the surface to "Numbered Days" that is never fully realized accentuating its view that death is always around the corner. E resorts back to the falsetto and includes a string section in "Fashion Awards," a track about the recent glut of awards shows filling our airwaves and the emotions displayed on many of their podiums. Shootenanny! closes with the optimistic "Somebody Loves You" echoing "Love Of The Loveless" and its reassurance that we've gotta take care of ourselves and even though that somebody who loves us might just be ourselves, "you're gonna make it through."

Shootenanny! is a fine album that might disappoint a few long-time EELS fans since the despair isn't as pronounced and a lot of those little touches that mark most EELS releases are gone with production focused more on that of a live band rather than highlighting a glockenspiel, handbell, Wurlitzer, or particularly interesting keyboard line. E has claimed himself as "John Paul Sartre with a Marshall stack" and he wouldn't be entirely wrong as he rocks hard in these existential times.

Fave tracks: "Love Of The Loveless," "Dirty Girl," "Rock Hard Times."

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