I’d only heard the occasional track by the idiosyncratic Mark Everett (aka E or Eels) before this year and never gotten around to exploring his work further. When I found out they were going to be playing a small club in Boston while I was there in February, I did a Spotify-YouTube immersion course and got hooked. This album (their 10th) dropped at around the same time and was a perfect showcase of Everett’s extraordinary creativity – equal measures of raging anger and touching tenderness. They’re damned good live, too.
Watch the video for ‘New Alphabet’