Eels

Eels was largely one person, singer/songwriter Mark Oliver Everett, also known as E. His music also evinced multiple personalities-full of bright pop appeal on one hand, lyrically willing to explore darker psychological depths on the other. The son of a prominent quantum theorist, and the grandson of an esteemed University of Massachusetts football coach, Virginia native Everett grew up loving music and was partially blinded by getting too close to a laser at a Who concert. He had his first depressive episode after his father's death in 1971, dropping out of school and taking a gas-station job. He moved to Los Angeles in 1987 and ultimately landed a record deal with PolyGram based on his songwriting. Two albums under the name E (sometimes clarified as A Man Called E) followed; both were embraced by critics and other fans of brainy pop, but neither saw much chart success. Eels was launched as a conceptual band with Beautiful Freak in 1996; Everett played many of the instruments and over time the studio crew would include fellow cult heroes Jon Brion, Grant-Lee Phillips Tom Waits and Peter Buck of R.E.M. While the first Eels album was relatively light in tone, the followup Electro-Shock Blues was Everett at his darkest; the album was inspired by the deaths of his sister (who had in fact undergone shock therapy) and mother. Further albums would show more of Everett's eccentric humor: 2000's Daisies of the Galaxy had the sound of a Beck album (if Beck had ever done his sample-driven pop and haunting country-folk numbers at the same time), and the same year's I am the Messiah was purportedly the work of a reclusive studio wizard and Capitol Records janitor called MC Honky. To disguise the fact that MC Honky was really Everett, he got somebody else to appear as Honky to open Eels shows. During 2007 Everett was the subject of a BBC documentary, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, in which he explored his father Hugh Everett III's scientific theories. Between 2009-10 he released three albums within 18 months; the three (Hombre Lobo, End Times and Tomorrow Morning) forming a trilogy on the subjects of desire, divorce, and new beginnings. Such themes would later play out in Everett's own life; at age 54 he had a brief second marriage and became a father for the first time. 2018 found Everett ending a four-year recording hiatus with The Deconstruction, whose songs displayed an emotional generosity inspired by his fatherhood.