Last night, after a long interlude with some Disney music (what the fuck was that? ‘Wish upon a star’?), the Eels frontman appeared on stage in a full body white jumpsuit, wearing dark glasses, his forehead and what was left of his face already invaded by a large beard, covered by a black bandanna. It seems he had adopted this very specific look for his tour, which ended in LA on Tuesday night, the 50th concert of the long journey across the world. And it was a scary look, no wonder he got questioned in London on suspicion of being a terrorist! But I digress.
The show started quietly with a beautiful rendition of ‘Grace Kelly Blues’, surprisingly, an old song from his 2000 album ‘Daisies of the Galaxy’, whereas the tour was supposed to promote his last album, but nothing should surprise his public anymore. As he was saying in a recent interview, he likes to keep things interesting, and if his last album is mostly keyboard oriented, he was using only guitars for this last tour. At the second song ‘What I have to offer’, multi-instrumentalist ‘the Chet’ had joined him on stage, and at the fourth song, three other musicians, Kool G Murder on bass, Knuckles on drums and P-Boo on guitar, had arrived to give a hard rocking version of ‘Prizefighter’.
There was an unexpected Lovin’ spoonful’s cover, ‘Summer in the city’, because Mark said he liked the summer, and more of these bluesy, menacing, hard rocking songs like ‘Tremendous dynamite’, ‘Jungle telegraph’, ‘Fresh blood’, ‘Dog faced boy’, or ‘Souljacker Part II’, digging into ‘Souljacker’ and ‘Hombre Lobo’ albums when he wanted to be mean and hairy, then calming down with ‘songs from ‘End times’ or ‘Tomorrow morning’
And the whole show was about this, alternating between intimate, melancholic even desperate songs sometimes accompanied by the Chet on steel guitar, and badass, ill-tempered versions of songs played fast and tight, so expeditious it was hard to keep track sometimes (I’m missing two songs in the setlist!), and so distorted it was really hard to recognize the songs; yeah I had heard this crazy-on speed-version of ‘I like birds’ before, but not that weird guitar thing on ‘My beloved monster’, and what was that Beatles’ thing on ‘Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues’?
Mark Oliver cultivates his look as much as his half-funny, half-malicious character who jokingly insults people when they try to shout something at him, by responding ‘Douchebag, don’t talk to me, I got the mic’, or by goofing around pretending it is Saturday (although it was a Tuesday), because he just wanted to rock on a Saturday night.
The set ended up with an unrestrained version of ‘Looking up’ with a sort of blues revue choreography, but there were two encores, I mean it was a little joke once again because they came back on stage to play only one song and disappeared to come back to play two more. ‘Two for Tuesday’ said Mark, ‘Oh I mean Saturday!’
One funny Hombre Lobo.
Setlist
Grace Kelly Blues
What I have to offer
End Times
Prizefighter
?
Gone Man
Summer in the city (an unexpected Lovin’ spoonful’s cover)
Tremendous dynamite so hard rocking menacing bad ass
In my dreams (beautiful pedal steel)
In my younger days
Paradise blues
Jungle telegraph
My beloved monster
Spectacular girl
Fresh blood
Dog faced boy
That look you give that guy
Souljacker Part II
Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues
I like birds
?
Looking up
Encore
That’s not her way
I like the way this is going
Baby loves me