Eels - Daisies of the Galaxy

* * * *

(Dreamworks)

Review: Russell Baillie


On this third album from the Los Angeles art-popsters it seems that E, the trio's bespectacled, keyboard-playing, singer-songwriter, has cheered up some.

Which, of course, isn't saying a lot, considering the bleakness of the last Electro-Shock Blues, its songs contemplating the suicide of his sister and death of his mother.

If it's jauntier in mood and delivery, Eels are still offering something akin to a reality check to Beck's scatterbrained dayglo world, while employing some of the same musical shapes.

New Orleans brass introduces the country lope of opener Grace Kelly Blues, there's beatbox-psychedelia of The Sound of Fear and Latin bounce beneath the bonus track, Mr E's Beautiful Blues.

It echoes the sorrows of its predecessor on the closing Selective Memory and another ballad making the fine the Oedipal expletive in its title and lyric.

But sad stories aside, Eels' third outing proves an oddly spirit-lifting pop album - and their crumpled musical quirks remain happily unironed out.