It was not in the script that Eels mastermind Mark Oliver Everett and producer and guitarist John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding) would dare to repeat their collaboration exactly twenty years after the Eels album “Souljacker” they hatched together. One director played a key role in this: Mark Romanek, who shot what was then the most expensive music video of all time (“Scream” by Michael and Janet Jackson) in 1995 and a year later the clip for “Novocaine For The Soul”, the lead single from Eels’ debut, In early 2021, “Beautiful Freak” gave Everett the news that “Souljacker” was once again in permanent rotation with him. The impetus to check if the old magic still works! Parish was contacted, song sketches were exchanged via e-mail, mutually developed and supplemented.
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The 14th Eels album that resulted from this intuitive experimental setup is entitled “Extreme Witchcraft”, which is at the same time grossly exaggerated and absolutely true. Already the pre-singles “Good Night On Earth” and “The Magic” proved that everything is still there: the fuzz guitars, the potently springy drums, the extroverted production. Even without hits of the caliber “Fresh Feeling” or “Woman Driving, Man Sleeping” the new edition of the teamwork was very worthwhile.
The attitude of the fatalistic, melancholic-lethargic loser is still present, for example in the deliberately unpolished “Better Living Through Desperation” or in the railway blues “Steam Engine”, which is reminiscent of Tom Waits, but it is no longer influential. “What It Isn’t”, the heart of the album, alternates between leisurely stanzas with a nostalgia filter and a brutal refrain escalation, to which Everett hisses from the bottom of his soul: “If it is what it is, then I’m gonna scream: Make it what it isn’t!’ He can also empathize with the Wurlitzer buzzing ‘Stumbling Bee’, ‘trying to fly in November’, but this time it’s clear: ‘I’m gonna find my way.’ The head of the Eels is now Even the lifebelt thrower, the getaway vehicle driver, the fountain of optimism and motivational coach who commands: “Whatever’s wrong in the world right now, let’s just make it right!”
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