Show Notes
It’s been a few months since the release of a new LTA podcast…a lot has happened in my life that meant I had to stand back from the show – not for the first time in its (nearly) 15 year existence….yet, I come back because discussing music with fellow music lovers, and putting those discussions into your earholes is something I love doing. With that said…….
...welcome to episode 192 of Love That Album Podcast.
Music is supposed to bring us happiness and joy. Sometimes though, it’s created as a form of catharsis for songwriters or performers. In 1998, Mark Everett’s band / collective Eels released their second LP Electro-Shock Blues. Everett had faced truly difficult times with the death of his sister Liz from suicide, and the death of his mother from cancer. His father had died several years earlier. Mark barely knew him as he was absorbed in his work as a quantum physicist. A genius in his field, but reportedly, the opposite as a father.
To mentally cope with his awful situation, Everett wrote the songs for Electro Shock Blues that deal with what was in his head and what was in his sister’s head leading up to her death. It’s not a cathartic record in the same way that the Lennon Plastic Ono Band is – there’s no Janov screaming, and Everett’s music is often wistful even if his stories are not. It’s written with nuance and is direct – is that a contradiction in terms? There is catharsis, but not in a tear-down the walls way.
Electro-Shock Blues is not a joyful listen, but it’s not ugly either. It’s a series of aural vignettes about a man coming to terms with tragedy. It's musically dark but it's also playful at times. I didn’t feel like making this a conversation with a fellow music lover – this episode is me going through the album’s history, and unpacking what Everett is doing, both lyrically and musically, and trying to determine his mental state at the time. To some, this may seem like a peculiar way for me to re-enter podcasting, but it was a show I felt compelled to do. I hope you get something out of it.
The book I sourced for information was Mark Everett’s autobiography “Things The Grandchildren Should Know. The BBC documentary I refer to is called “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives”. It lives on Youtube at the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsqlWaSviTk
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