Album Review: Eels - Wonderful, Glorious

Ten albums in, Eels look to re-launch themselves with Wonderful, Glorious. It's been just over two years since the band completed a trilogy of releases, a sequence finished with the somewhat optimistic Tomorrow Morning. But much of that optimism seems to have evaporated for Mark Everett Oliver, aka E, as he resolves to tell it like it is on the album's opener and mission statement Bombs Away. Over a menacing groove, E growls he's 'tired of being complacent'. But having built the tension nicely, the band stop short of producing an explosive pay-off to the song and it's this failure to let things take flight that almost seems representative of the entire album, one that threatens to go off but is then reined in.

Don't get me wrong, there are some great moments here. Kinda Fuzzy delivers some wicked jagged blues and second single New Alphabet has a swampy, Tom Waits-esque vibe. Some quiet moments also shine, like the beautifully bleak On The Ropes and happier I'm Building A Shrine. The problem is the sequencing, though, as each time the album builds some momentum they throw in a quiet track to bring it to a halt. And thematically, the notion of E unleashing his opinions goes out the door after the first track. Instead we're left with E's usual themes of describing past heartbreaks (True Original) and times when he's been beaten down (The Turnaround). There's nothing wrong with that, it's what Eels are all about, but it wasn't what was promised at the start and as a result this album falls a little flat. It has some good moments but feels more like a collection slapped together as nothing moulds it into a cohesive whole.