Eels : 'Hombre Lobo'
Released: 2nd June 2009
Label: Polydor
Bands explain the concept of their albums in many different ways. "We decided to make a comeback album because we were all in a good place and thought the time was right." (We're skint) "We just got together in a studio and started making these amazing sounds and thought, 'Wow, this is something completely different'." (We've added a bit of piano) "We wanted to make fun, sexy, clubby pop based on raunchy r'n'b that explores our sexuality." (We want to be in Heat magazine) Not Mark Oliver Everett. 'E' was inspired to make Hombre Lobo by looking at his beard. Apparently after looking at his shaggy mug in the mirror he was reminded of his previous song "Dog-Faced Boy" and thought "I know, I'll take that character and turn him into a fully grown werewolf (Hombre Lobo: Spanish for Werewolf) and write an album about his desires." Sounds bat-shit mental. Makes for an absolutely cracking album.
Like a werewolf the album is part man, part beast. The beast is a raging, howling mass of fur, fangs and claws, eager to tear off both your clothes and your flesh. The beauty side produces painfully gorgeous ballads about love unrequited, found and lost. Opening track "Prizefighter" starts of with a howl before launching into a paw-stomping Bluesy-Rock of good old-fashioned riffs, rhythms and guitars; definitely one to listen to indoors whilst wearing your Ray Bans. Lyrics such as "I'm a don't do it wrong - do it righter/ I'm a prize fighter" give the song that little extra boost John Wayne swagger. Far more of an impact though, in this track and throughout the album, is made by E's voice. He's always been able to produce that Rod Stewart-esque gravel growl but some of the sounds he makes on this album make you genuinely wonder if he's been eating razor blades washed down with shots of bleach. Don't worry though, it's all production trickery combined with using the microphone as an endoscope. It may sound a bit gimmicky but in each track E's voice and everything done to it has been suitably tailored to the tone of the track. In "Tremendous Dynamite", an absolute barnstormer of a I'm-going-shag-your-brains-out 60's funk-rock E's voice becomes an entirely new instrument; squint your ears a bit and it sounds like Jimi Hendrix reborn as some sort of man-guitar hybrid. In "Fresh Blood" the most obviously "werewolf" of the tracks ("After the fires, before the blood/My sweet baby I need fresh blood") it sounds like he's actually singing through fangs and gives his howls that extra bit of feral energy. Putting all this over a menacing bass line, spidery guitars and slowly-stalking-you drums and you've got one very dark, very sexy rock song.
What is so startling about this album is how all this animal magic suddenly switches into aching and delicate ballads, creating two entirely distinct tones to the album. Neither overshadows the other and the contrast between them shows the band's masterful ability to create great songs on opposite sides of the emotional spectrum. The first of these mellower tracks is "That Look You Give That Guy", lilting guitars and stripped down bass and drums providing the perfect backdrop to a song about the sense of frustration an inadequacy of loving a girl that some other bastards got. Again E's expertly handled voice adds that something a bit special; as the chorus tiptoes in "That look you give that guy/I wanna see/looking right at me" sounds all the more impassioned with the delicate falsetto and a hint of distortion. It's a sense of fatigue and impotence. It's Jack Johnson, if God had remembered to furnish him with a soul. "The Longing" is a superbly crafted song about a love lost, again with a bare bones band guitars providing oscillating, harp-like riffs while E sings from underwater, drowning because "The longing is a pain/A heavy pressure on the chest".
The album is full of lurking heartbreakers like this, just waiting to turn you into a weeping wreck. Just as it does this though it'll hit you with a track from the belly of the beast and you'll be ready to fuck anything that moves. Anyone watching your expressions change as you listen to it on the tube will move to the end of the carriage and get off at the next stop, regardless of if its the station they want or not. You'll look mental. But then again it's an album based on a mental sounding concept. I thought about making my own concept album inspired by my appearance but then someone said I look like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. After that I decided not to bother: no-one will enjoy The River Cottage Jazz-Folk album. You will definitely enjoy Hombre Lobo though; full of expertly crafted songs and emotional extremes it is without doubt the best album to ever have been inspired by a beard.
Words: Harvey Ovenden
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