Eels
By Andrew P Street
Was Hombre Lobo conceptualised as an album about desire, or were these just the songs that you'd written? No, I knew ahead of time that's what I wanted to do.
Why desire? I think after spending the last four years constantly living in my past, writing an autobiography [Things the Grandchildren Should Know], making a documentary about my father ['Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives' about the late physicist Hugh Everett III, who first postulated the controversial multi-dimensional "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum theory] and putting together a retrospective Eels collection [Meet the Eels], I really needed to do something that felt immediate and at the moment, instead of looking back. Desire just seemed like a perfect topic: real immediate, something distinct, to the point.
The album's split very neatly in mood between the wistfully romantic and the downright horny. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I wanted to look at desire from all different angles. To me, I was thinking of them as kind of sales pitches from this character who was trying to convince the object of his desire that he is the one for them. He takes different approaches from each sales pitch, sometimes he tries a tender approach and other times he loses his cool.
Musically it's the most stripped back Eels record yet. There's a lot of space on the record. Yeah, that was part of the immediate thing that I was so interested in. You want that kind of space to feel the passion, you don't want it to be over crowded.
Was it knocked out quickly? Well, it took about a month to do. It's about average, it's about what most of them take with the exception of the last one, the Blinking Lights [and Other Revelations] one, which took millions of years.
It's been four years since there has been an all-new Eels record – did you feel any sort of pressure coming back? I did feel like I painted myself into a little bit of a corner with the Blinking Lights album because it felt like the album I'm supposed to make at the end of my life. Where do you go from there? I knew that I needed to create some space before I moved on and luckily all these other projects came along and kept me busy for four years. You know, part of the problem is my family history; I always have this feeling in the back of my mind that I am racing against the clock, like I am possibly doomed like the rest of my family. I always feel like 'oh you know, I'm only 40 it's kinda crazy to be writing my life story, but I'd better do it now or I might not get a chance.' Now it's awkward: it's four years later and hey, I'm still here.
Premature or not, it was still a thumping good read. I think that's because there is enough drama in those 40 years for most 80-year-olds. That's why I realised it was OK to do it. I do want to write a sequel to it when I am 80 and I want the sequel to be the most boring book ever because I am determined that this is the beginning of the carefree years. I can not take any more drama.
Incidentally, have you been abreast of the development of quantum computing lately? If it works – and early signs appear positive – it would be the first piece of concrete evidence that the Many Worlds theory may in fact be correct. Damn! [laughs] How do I get some royalties on that?
Hombre Lobo is out now through Shock.
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