Shootenanny

Mr E is everybody's favourite oddball Uncle. The kids love him - cos he hangs with Shrek and The Grinch; Mom and Pop dig the way he reminds them of weird buzzards like Tom and Neil and hermetic old Mr Wilson; brother Jethro says he's like Elvis Costello after therapy: prolific, a crafter, but fluent in the heart's Esperanto, unencumbered by all that convoluted wordplay. And Uncle E never outstays his welcome, just shows up every year or two with a big bag of goodies for all, does the rounds and then goes back to his dank, dark basement of the soul.

This year's selection box comes stamped with an NRA approved title and, like Mr Gump said, you never know what you're gonna get. eels' first four records were bi-polar swings between the cooked (Beautiful Freak, Daisies Of The Universe) and the raw (Electro Shock Blues, Souljacker). This one synthesises the two in the same way Blonde On Blonde managed to juggle love sonnets and Bunuel blues - the latter element evident here from the get-go with the gimp-legged, harp-saturated opener "All In A Day's Work", which modulates from Chicago blues to Tin Pan Alley workshop. Further on in, "Saturday Morning" offers wry comment on the garage boom by sending up the Stones and Them at their snottiest.

Shootenanny is not quite as elaborate as previous eels records, rejoicing in simple beat group, rockabilly and ballad styles and tossing off peachy little titles like "Dirty Girl", "Wrong About Bobby" and "Lone Wolf" (imagine the Unabomber covering The Kinks) in under three minutes a shot. This is all good stuff, but it's only when the listener clocks the tender bruises of "The Good Old Days" that it again becomes apparent this guy is no idle poptician piecing together bits of musical Meccano in the basement with the lonely detachment of a child pulling the wings off flies or a sociopath peering at his pipe bombs through milk bottle lenses. E's pump organ heart, to borrow a phrase from Mr Cohen, sizzles like shish kebab in his chest; it's this persistent heartburn that keeps his art from becoming too smug. "I'm like waking up after a bad dream," he tells his missus, "It's up to you and me, and whose to say/These could be the good old days", and it's like the reverse positive of Jack Nicholson's comically anguished cry: "What if this is as good as it gets?" Mind you, the dark stuff gets a look-in in the Lennon-like despair of "Agony". Then there's "Restraining Order Blues", which simultaneously manages to be a thing of beauty and downright creepy-crawly: "Everybody knows that I'm not a violent man/Just someone who knows he's in love."

eels contemporaries like Beck have experienced mid-career identity crises because Mr Hansen's fringe audience got bamboozled by the post-irony heartspeak of artefacts such as Mutations and Sea Change. E?s songs on the other hand, carefully balance the AC of the head with the DC of the soul. He's an artful dodger who can switch from personal to persona without sweating it, and Shootenanny is a series of 13 short sharp shocks administered over a brisk 45 minutes. The treatment works. See you in 18 months, Uncle.