Electro-Shock Blues

Shy and flirtatious, the record is most immediately striking in its peculiar mix of the odd and the impenetrable. Give it time though, and like a friend becoming more open the tunes come out to play in all the sunshine of a pop record. From behind the daunting veneer of E's eclecticism (the record encompasses ska, hip hop and tom waits-style odes to the oddball with seamless cohesion) there emerges, with time, a secret garden of some of the most beautiful music put on record in the last ten years.

On the opening and title tracks E manages to chronicle his sister's suicide with the kind of semi-detached intimacy that steers Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar' away from trite self-pity and into something genuinely harrowing and affecting. It's like watching a car crash - terrible and private in its horror, yet somehow seductive in its explicit beauty. Even at its most desperate, Electro-Shock Blues is as addictive as hell.

The events that would inspire much of the album (The suicide of E's sister and his mother's terminal illness) are perfectly balanced in the closing PS You Rock My World. What can you say about this song? From the very abyss of despair comes a hope like the thread of light from beneath a cell door, a hope that moves to tears, shivers and near nausea. If the previous 40 minutes of Electro Shock Blues are spent emptying your soul to the very last drop, its final three are spent pouring back sweet, hair-on-end affirmation of life itself. Sometimes words are just so inadequate, aren't they?

Still, in between the harrowing and the beautiful is some of the most infectious, contagious music I have ever heard. From the strutting ska of Hospital Food (a thinly disguised rewrite of Squeeze's 'Cool For Cats') to the insane stalling mosh of 'Last Stop: This Town' and the slight, low-key humour of 'Baby Genius' 'Electro-Shock Blues' is an embarrassment of riches. Really, there isn't a duff track on here.

The fact that I am already looking forward tomorrow to throwing my hard-earned student rate cash at the remaining Eels albums is testament enough. You really would struggle to find a more worthy purchase on this entire website.


Great stuff   March 17, 2006
R. M. Morgan (australia)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

Such a bleak and depressing album. Yet I love listening to it.
Somehow it manages to cheer me up everytime.
I think you need to listen to it a couple of times, but once you get it - you cant stop.
highly recommended.
as are all of his albums.


fantasmobolical   January 1, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

It was certainly a difficuilt task to follow Beautiful freak, but again the eels don't fail to disappiont. The album maintains the high level of consistancy, which we have come to expect from the eels.
Although some of the other reviews describe it as boring, and depressing. Certainly the single "Last stop: this town" paints a false image of what the album is like, and people buying the album expecting more catchy classics like "novicane for the soul" and "Susans House", will probably be dissapointed. But no hardened eels fan can be unhappy with Electro-shock Blues, it provides simplistic, atmopheric songs, which reflect on a very difficuilt period in E's life. However I feel the real power behind this album lies in the carfully crafted lyrics, these gives the album in my view a subtley uplifting quality, enhancing the album a sense of potensy. All together an awesome album, and one i would recommend to anyone, ( with a taste in quality music).


It just gets better   January 17, 2002
wondermaze (UK)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

Eels are like, well .. nobody really!
Whatis more, this is a very different album from the previous Beautiful Freak. So it's nothing like they have done either. So that makes it "New" in my book.

E's well documented family history is in evidence right from the beginning of what, on first listen appears to be a rather melancholy album. But their are a lot of positives to be found amongst the angst.

"Going to your funeral" may seem a rather depressing title, but what a great track. "Cancer for the Cure" follows it up with a song like no other you have ever heard. But then there is "Last stop this town", "climbing to the moon", "ps you rock my world". This album just gets better and better with each listen.
If you are looking for something bizarre then "Baby Genius" is waiting for you.
It can be a challenging listen but well worth the effort.

The whole albulm can be summed up in the lyrics of the last track
" I was at a funeral when I realised I wanted to spend my life with you"
The juxtaposition of the melancholy and the uplifting is a recurring theme of a great albulm.


Quite possibly the greatest album ever conceived...   October 18, 2003
EchoandSomeBunnymen (Preston, Lancashire United Kingdom)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful

Wow. There isnt one bad word i can write about this album. From the despair of Elizabeth on the Bathroom floor all the way through to P.S You Rock my World, the album is flawless. It takes you on a journey through the psyche of "E" from the pain of his sisters' suicide (elizabeth), his mothers' cancer (cancer for the cure), living in his fathers' shadow (baby genius). The album is life affirming in the sense it teaches you not to look at life so seriously and by the time P.S You Rock My World comes on with the immortal line "and maybe its time to live" you truly have had a brush with genius. Either that or you have no taste in music. You decide.