Eels
Shootenanny
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Shootenany! is the fourth album by Los Angeles, California's Eels, the slightly off-kilter alt-rock brainchild of E (Mark Oliver Everett). Performing and recording since 1995 and best known for their 1996 semi-hit "Novocaine for the Soul," Eels write skewed and dour post-Nirvana rock music: think of Beck’s rock songs (i.e., "Devil's Haircut") without the irony/humor/weirdness and with more melancholy and disturbance. Shootenany! is a bit of an uplift though from the group's more depressive works like Electro-Shock Blues (1998) and Souljacker (2001). This album harkens back to the oddly fresh feel of 2000's Daisies of the Galaxy. "Saturday Morning" offers a powerful and jaunty chorus that surprises the listener early in the album and breathes a bit of life into the staleness of current modern rock, oddly enough by recalling modern rock circa 1996 or 1997. "Love of the Loveless" is a bittersweet ballad that exemplifies E's perpetual knack for penning a pretty melody. Overall, the songs drift between good-natured rockers, bluesy workouts, and simple sad songs. Put together, Shootenany! would not be out of place on modern rock radio in 1996 and the time that "Novocaine for the Soul" was spinning regularly, which is good or bad depending on your tastes. To me, it's nice to hear in 2003.

Though Shootenany! is not a masterwork by anyone's standards, it is an enjoyable collection of songs that harkens back to the mid-1990s and a good time for modern rock radio, when aimless aggression, empty overpowering riffage, and rap-rock hybrids were not the norm. Though this shows Eels' lack of evolution, it also shows how they can sonically capture a specific moment in time, allowing the listener to be brought back to a different time. If any music can achieve such a response, it is doing something right.

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