Eels

"Mark Oliver Everett!". Peremptory and solemn, a mysterious voice echoes through the walls of the Milan Conservatory. "THIS is your life!". Dark work overalls and a baseball cap pulled down over his face, the man they call E looks around in confusion in the dim light of the hall. "It is? Weird…", he mutters, half incredulous, half sarcastic. Mr. E vs. God, act one: the theatrical staging of the life and miracles of Mark Oliver Everett begins. Alone with his guitar, the creator of the Eels, as befits any story worth telling, starts his tale with the most classic of incipits: the moment of birth. "I was happy to be alive / In a magic world". Once upon a time there was the son of a quantum physicist who dreamed of playing the drums…

In 2005, E had stolen the hearts of the Milan crowd with the chamber-music incarnation of "Eels with strings". On his return to Italy, he had thrown everyone off guard with his sharper, more electric side, proclaiming himself "No strings attached". This time, with "An evening with Eels", E brings to the stage a kind of autobiography in music and words, ready to bare himself with his usual sincerity and self-deprecating humour. But not everything goes as planned.

E's diary opens even before the concert begins, with the screening of the BBC documentary "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives", devoted to Everett's journey to rediscover the memory of his father, the brilliant and misunderstood originator of a groundbreaking scientific theory on parallel universes. Part of the audience, however, seems utterly unable to grasp the point of the film, and starts booing and grumbling with a startling display of obtuseness: startling especially coming from people who, having chosen to attend an Eels concert, should presumably have at least some predisposition towards E's quirks and his family confessions…

It becomes clear right away, then, that this time the perfect alchemy between audience and artist from three years ago won't be repeated. Mr. E intersperses the songs with humorous sketches and readings from his recent autobiography, "Things The Grandchildren Should Know", but none of his ideas seem to truly win the crowd over.

It might seem pretentious, this wish to depart from the standard rock-concert format to make room for stories, images, snatches of cabaret… But there's no presumption in what E does: it's rather the need to once again place the plain, simple telling of his own life experience at the centre of things. The voice-over, after all, had announced it from the start: "The following is a true story"… What seems to be missing from the Conservatory audience is precisely the willingness to engage on this level, to confront a human experience: every attempt to go deeper ends up being perceived as an annoying intrusion of something foreign to the music. It's hardly surprising, then, that by the end of the show E won't even acknowledge the handful of diehard fans left shivering in the cold, hoping for an autograph from their prickly idol…

After a couple of songs performed solo, E is joined for the rest of the evening by his trusty sidekick The Chet, who embellishes the melody of the old "Strawberry Blonde" — dusted off for the occasion from the trove of E's b-sides — with his guitar filigree: a two-man formula that reconnects E's solo origins with the decade-long history of Eels in an intimate, airy guise. The partnership with The Chet, which has lasted since the days of "Shootenanny!", has reached such a level of chemistry that the old collaboration with former drummer Butch is hardly missed. And even if the charm of "Eels with strings" remains hard to match, The Chet once again proves himself not only a highly capable multi-instrumentalist, moving between guitar, drums, piano, saw, pedal steel and organ, but also the perfect foil for E's witty interludes.

Riding the wave of "Useless Trinkets", E pulls out rarities like "I Want To Protect You" and the superb "Fucker", which despite remaining unreleased for a long time has always been one of the most beloved songs among Eels fans. Over the course of the evening, the album E draws on most is the masterpiece "Electro-Shock Blues", from an unexpected "Ant Farm" to the celesta chime of "Last Stop: This Town", right through to an "Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor" made even more spectral by the crying of the saw.

"Souljacker Part I" morphs into a lunar blues, threaded with the acid guitar lines of The Chet and E's raw, rasping cries. The powerful guitar-and-drums renditions of "My Beloved Monster" and "Novocaine For The Soul", usually reworked in the most unlikely ways, sound instead surprisingly faithful to the originals.

Mr. E once again plays with rock-star clichés, reading out a series of mock fan letters and a collection of reviews that systematically praise only The Chet's performances… He then hands his partner two passages from "Things The Grandchildren Should Know" to read aloud, in which E recounts first his surreal encounter in Los Angeles with actress Angie Dickinson, and then the episode that inspired "Last Stop: This Town", when his landlady told him she had seen the ghost of a young girl wandering around his apartment, and E imagined that the spirit of his sister Elizabeth might have come back to say goodbye one last time.

The real standout is an explosive "Flyswatter", with E and The Chet swapping places between piano and drums in the middle of the song, allowing Mr. E to resurrect his past as a skilled drummer with a fiery solo. "Bus Stop Boxer" takes on fresh dramatic weight thanks to a stirring piano accompaniment, while The Chet proves he can more than hold his own as a singer too, backed on drums by E, in a cover of none other than "Good Times, Bad Times" by Led Zeppelin…

Back on stage for the encores, a stripped-down, delicate "P.S. You Rock My World" brings E's existential arc to completion in the simplest, most concrete way: "Maybe it's time to live", E murmurs in his dust-caked voice, and his words ring with a truth whose correspondence to the heart is easy to recognise. "The toughest circumstances I've gone through", E reflects in his autobiography, "have made it easier for me to truly appreciate all the great things in my life".

The voice of the deus ex machina echoing through the hall has now lost its menacing tone. "Mark Oliver Everett! You've done good, kid!".

(12/03/2008)

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