ticket + review:
Versatility. Beck has it, Rory Bremner has it, and Mark "E" Everett's backing band has it in spades. Stage left on Monday night was new member Lisa Germano. In the course of the performance, she handled a plethora of instruments including violin, flute, keyboards and mandolin. Then there was the guy in the Santa Claus outfit. He played trombone, guitar... well you get the idea. These two were linchpins in a sextet which lent a more organic feel to EELS' greatest hits. There were some surprising cover versions, too.
While 1998's Electro-Shock Blues tackled the suicide of E's sister and his mother's death to cancer, EELS latest, Daisies Of The Galaxy, tempers its nostalgia and social-realism with pockets of joie de vivre. "Two songs have the word 'daisies' in the title, and neither of them has the words 'pushing-up' before it", E remarked upon the album's release. He knows that life has scarred him, all right, but a black sense of humour is one of his lifelines.
Ambling on to the stage, he looked like the kind of shopping-mall loner who subscribes to Guns & Ammo. A version of Nina Simone's Feelin' Good soon shattered that image, however, and as the brass section slinked while E led on piano, the song's simple message became a shared experience.
As a former member of the Young Ornithologists Club, this writer enjoyed I Like Birds just as much. Judging by the audience's response to its skiffle-feel stomp, I wasn't the only closet twitcher in attendance. About midway through the performance, E announced a short question-and-answer session. "Where's Peter Buck?", someone shouted. (Buck guested on Daisies Of The Galaxy). "Peter's busy with REM", replied E. When this reply was met with silence, the singer paused, then dead-panned: "That concludes the question and answer session." This guy's sense of humour isn't dry, it's desiccated.
The encores provided everything you could have asked for, and a bit more besides. We got Novocaine For The Soul, its intro revamped by an excerpt from Holst's Planets suite. We got a strangely affecting version of Presley's I Can't Help Falling In Love With you, it's traditional structure offering clues to Everett's roots as a songwriter.
Later, when E announced "I have to go pee", then said goodnight for the second time, that seemed to be that. Those in the know stayed put, though, and sure enough, EELS took the stage again some 10 minutes later. By now the hall was four-fifths empty and the bouncers and bar-staff were checking their watches. Everybody else was delighted.
[review by James McNair for The Independant © 2000 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. - used with kind permission]
