Souljacker

Souljacker was co-written and produced by John Parish, perhaps best known as a P.J. Harvey collaborator, but it still sounds very much like Mr E’s record. According to E, the term souljacker derives from a media description of an American serial killer, who purports to steal the souls of his victims. Lost and endangered souls are certainly in evidence in the songs – if this is a concept album, it’s a black road-movie view of America’s (or E’s) seedy underbelly, with a harum-scarum parade of comi-tragic characters scattered along the way: dog-faced boys, friendly ghosts, male prostitutes and teenage witches.

The album sleeve notes trumpet an intention to ROCK HARD, and the band occasionally do, but even at their noisiest and rawest, it seems an impossibility for Eels not to sound measured and ironic, with rather stagy-sounding guitar fuzz and much ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ maracas-shaking.

Souljacker is full of the esoteric buzzing and flickering, mercurial keyboard chords and those shifty, skipping record noises the Eels are seemingly so fond of. There are more dirty chugging grooves than last year’s Daisies Of The Galaxy album, and they briefly break away from the electro-shock therapy for a few satisfyingly solid slow songs like the REM-ish gravitas of ‘Woman Driving, Man Sleeping’ and the weary isolated ‘Bus Stop Boxer.’

I’m not sure there’s a track to match ‘Novocaine For The Soul’, ‘Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues’ or any of the standout’s from their previous albums, but as you’d expect from the Eels, Souljacker is clever, archly amusing and interesting in places.