2 keepers
keeper avg .166
Coming thirteen years after their MTV breakthrough with "Novocaine for the Soul", "Hombre Lobo" was Mark Oliver Everett's (E's) highest charting album (in the US) as Eels or solo. The album certainly does have a focus and a single theme, in this case the effects of desire. Opening track "Prizefighter" is a jaunty little one-riff ditty, establishing a template of simple song structures with limited detours. "Tremendous Dynamite" and "What's a Fella Gotta Do" are also on the rocking side, both played with a raucous White Stripes economy and unfortunately, monotony. Other more poppy songs, like the mid-tempo "In My Dreams" and "My Timing Is Off" and the Brip-pop "Beginner's Luck" also offer few surprises.
E displays a more modest side with "That Look You Give That Guy"****, giving a subtle vocal performance that shines in the restrained solo guitar arrangement, and with the tentative, pining "The Longing," E's copy of "Time In A Bottle" (Jim Croce, 1973). The high point of the album is the malevolently swaggering "Fresh Blood"****, springing into bestial action with an unhinged whoop! Near the end of the album "All the Beautiful Things" (why can't I just get with you) is a brief folky orch-pop pit stop, reminding me of early Rod Stewart. The album closes with "Ordinary Man," which bookends the end of the album for the self-touting (or self-soothing) album opener "Prizefighter," and resembles a slightly punchier "Here, There and Everywhere" (1966). As noted, the album proudly wears its influences from right around the year 1970, and while not necessarily innovative overall has a pleasant, appropriately warm sound.
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