The record is officially released in the UK on 1st March, but eager beavers can snap it up at the Eels' online store right now. Artwork comes from Adrian Tomine, who has wonderfully rendered Eels main man E to match the stylings of the End Times artwork. The whole package is a pretty nice deal since this thing actually has a spine like an LP, and an inner sleeve; a really pleasing if somewhat unnecessary touch.
'A Line in the Dirt' continues the bizarre Eels trend started on 'My Timing is Off' of producing a video and heavily promoting a song before doing a total u-turn and sticking it on the B-side and using some other album track as the A-side.
'Little Bird' has been around on the Eels' website for a few months now as a free download and even made AOL Music's list of the best 25 songs of 2009 (a truly wild and unfathomable list!) Here's the video:
The song is immediately recognisable as classic Eels; a quiet, pretty reflection on lost love, hinging on a husky "God damn" from the world-weary E. Although familiar, the song has enough sincerity to make it stand aside from other similarly beautiful-but-broken moments from Blinking Lights and Other Revelations and older favourites like 'It's a Motherfucker'.
Eels have also produced videos for End Times tracks 'In My Younger Days' and 'Unhinged', so it's not clear at all as to why 'A Line in the Dirt' has leap-frogged all these songs to end up as the first (and likely only) single from the album. Maybe simply because it's just that good?
The track opens with the same piano chords as 'Manchester Girl'; an early Eels song that I would place in my top five all-time favourite Eels tracks, and treads the same maudlin path, although going on to encompass a restrained, subtly uplifting brass section. The choruses are delicate - E adopting the high, slightly strained vocal approach he uses to such fractured effect (think 'Selective Memory' from Daisies of the Galaxy).
This is great single with two top-notch tracks, presented here as the cream of End Times in a thoughtfully-produced package. Not much to offer the listener who already owns the album, but still worth getting hold of in my opinion if you are a fan of this man's work. There is just something so much better about listening to these songs on an old beat-up record player than on a shiny new iPod. Still, if you must you can get 'Little Bird' as a free download here.
