On Wednesday night, Chelsea Wolfe opened this long show at the Orpheum with her brand of austere, atmospheric music, but rather a tall singing clown opened the show! I had almost forgotten Puddles Pity Party’s act, with his monkey girl a bit later on, he was entertaining the audience before the show and between the acts, with his amazing tenor-like singing voice, embodying the funny and the sad at once. He even thrilled the crowd with a crazy cover of Lorde’s ‘Royals’, and I thought he should totally record it.
I had seen Chelsea Wolfe before, and it seems that her style was slightly different this time, less heavy doom metal, more ethereal and melancholic folk, and much more stripped down, although the goth part was still there. She may sound like an odd opener for Eels, and may be she was, but she is after all a Wolfe and Everett used to be a ‘Lone Wolf’, so there is some common ground there. That said, a lot of people were walking around and may be not totally convinced? Chelsea is super intense, and this time she appeared wrapped in vaporous veils and surrounded by two musicians, on keys/synth and violin. Actually the stage was so dark that I could not see much, but this darkness totally fitted her super atmospheric compositions. Don’t count on her to cheer you up, her set was all about sad and lugubrious violin, post-apocalypse soundscapes, haunting circular melodies and throbbing harmonies. She composes soundtracks for invisible films noirs – or may be not that invisible anymore as one of her songs is featured on the trailer for HBO’s Game of Thrones… and this is exactly what I am talking about, I don’t watch this show, but I totally see her music in this context of a weird blend of Greek tragedy and medieval fantasy. It is part Roman vestal in a temple, part Excalibur magical story, part Christians sacrificed to lions, part vampire taken off in a cold night, and I am saying this without having any idea about the lyrics – however her last album is called ‘Pain is Beauty’ so this speaks by itself. Her music gives you the chills, it’s solemn slow and majestic, with eerie-ghostly vocals stuck in darkness, and honestly it required some effort to sit through her entire set when you had the Eels in your mind.
I have seen many incarnations of the Eels, and the one at the Orpheum on Wednesday night was a very lo-key, intimate and subtle one, with very quiet moments and people listening without making a noise, deeply submerged into Mark Oliver Everett’s songs. Mark himself was a bit astonished to be playing in this beautiful place, wearing a suit and a minimal beard (not this long ZZ Top thing he had grown a few years back) ‘It may be a little too PBS for me, I miss the tracksuit!’ The lightning was splendid, with the back of the stage looking like a starry night as Everett opened the set with the classic ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ after the short instrumental from his last album ‘The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett’. The songs had been delicately picked to fit the tone of the show, quiet, melancholic and peaceful, showcasing Mark Oliver’s sweet melodies, and suddenly lighting up a musician who was playing at a particular moment. It was a beautiful scene, and Everett was switching from guitar to piano, saying he was embarking us in a musical journey of ‘soft bummer rock’. Think what you want of Mark Oliver Everett – yes his last albums are not matching anything he did in the past – but the live shows are always great and different each time. Actually this time was really different. And they had to do something different, because of the pressure of that last gig of the tour, that hometown gig.
The first part of the show looked like an intimate affair with new and old songs, an occasional local flavor (‘Mansions of Los Feliz’ where Mark lives) and Mark was browsing his large catalogue while telling us ‘this is another bummer’, or ‘this wasn’t such a bummer after all’, or ‘This one is a total bummer’… it was definitively a bummer set, no real Hombre Lobo, Lone Wolf or Souljacker, but a lot of cautionary tales about birds, daisies, blinking lights and other heartbreaks. If you have read his book, you know that E has had a rude life, his whole family dropped dead in a few years, but he always tells us to look for the daisy through concrete and there’s always something very soothing about sharing pain through art. ‘This is next level bummer, so brace yourselves’ he said before ‘Lockdown Hurricane’. That was his humorous way to navigate from one depressing and self-pitying song to another. ‘It’s over, the nightmare is over, it was cathartic I feel better’, he said just after, and this may have revealed a lot about the self-therapeutic nature of his music.
Later, there were more famous songs, some of my favorites from ‘Daisies of the Galaxy’ – ‘A Daisy Through Concrete’, ‘Grace Kelly Blues’, ‘I Like Birds’, ‘My Beloved Monster’ — which brought some upbeat ambiance for a little while, then we were back to a few more bummers…. When it was time to disappear and come back for an encore, Mark ran in the crowd of the theater, saying ‘Give me a hug’, hugging as many people as possible! ‘ Unfortunately, I was in the back, too far to have the chance to do that, ‘It was fun but exhausting’ he said before going back on stage, skipping the ‘charade of the encore’, and doing a few more songs…then they disappeared and came back for a second encore, then disappeared again, but the lights of the theater were still off, I was skeptical about a third encore, but it definitively happened, with Steve Perry of Journey.
A few days after the concert, it is not a surprise anymore, but people were quite amazed and happy to see this unexpected guest, not that you would expect Eels’ fans, NPR listeners and indie music aficionados, to enjoy Journey,… but they totally did. I read it was the third time that Perry was joining the Eels on stage lately (he did it in St. Paul and Washington D.C. a few days ago) so at this point, they should tour together. Journey? I only remember a few songs and seeing Steve Perry in the super video ‘We are the World’; he had quite a part, and a voice. He still has the voice, and he blew the crowd away with classics like ‘Only Sixteen (Sam Cooke cover)’, ‘Open Arms’, ‘Lights’ – yeah that was something and he explained that the song was originally written about Los Angeles but LA was transformed into the Bay – and ‘Lovin’, Touchin’ Squeezin’. There was a sudden arena dimension to the performance which had stayed very subtle and intimate till now. Before this, Perry covers the Eels’ song ‘It’s a Motherfucker’ giving a whole new dimension to the emotional line ‘It’s a motherfucker/Being here without you’. It is a song that Mark Oliver usually sings with lumps in his throat, his spine bent over his keys, and Perry was making a stadium show of it, reaching out the high notes, and movingly dedicating the song to his girlfriend who died in 2012. It turns out that Steve Perry and the Eels have been long time friends. Perry used to come to Eels’ show as a fan and wanted to meet with Mark for years. When they finally did, they developed a real friendship and it was just a matter of time before Steve would grab the mic (something he hadn’t done for a while) and the Eels would cover a few Journey songs… Still, I didn’t expect everyone to sing along ‘na na nana na nana’ at this concert. Plus Perry hadn’t sung in LA for 20 years, so of course it was an amazing scene, and everyone seemed so happy, Mark, Steve, the crowd. It was quite a contrast with the dark drama of Chelsea Wolfe who had started the night. This seemed to have happened a million years ago, the drama was still there, life was still a motherfucker, but everyone was now laughing at it.
Setlist
Where I’m At
When You wish Upon a Star
The Morning
Parallels
Mansions of Los Feliz
My Timing is Off
A line in the Dirt
Where I’m From
Lockdown Hurricane
A Daisy Through Concrete
Grace Kelly Blues
Fresh Feeling
I Like Birds
My Beloved Monster
Gentlemen’s Choice
Mistakes of My Youth
Where I’m Going
Encore
I Like the Way This is Going
Blinking Lights (For Me)
Last Stop: This Town
Encore 2:
Can’t Help Falling in Love
Turn On Your Radio (Nisson cover)
Encore 3 with Steve Perry
It’s a Motherfucker
Only Sixteen (Sam Cooke cover)
Open Arms
Lights
Lovin’, Touchin’ Squeezin’.
