Eels, "Your Lucky Day in Hell" (1996)

(listen)

The Eels is essentially a one-man project, the man in question being Mark Oliver Everett, aka "E" (hence, somehow, one presumes, the name of the band), who is the son of a quantum physicist. I don't know the Eels well—in fact, this song, third single from the first album, Beautiful Freak, is for me more on the order of another CMJ discovery (Vol. 38, October 1996, track 2) and subsequent handy mix tape staple. It's possible you know it from one of its movie appearances, in Scream 2, Grosse Pointe Blank, Dead Man on Campus, and Yes Man. I have the first three Eels albums on my hard drive but haven't sat down yet to study them properly. This song, which has more or less made a study of me, has so far been quite enough. How does anyone duplicate the experience of one great song anyway? Last week, when I happened to be having my own private series of lucky days in hell, I found out one of its best uses is as tonic. It is moody affectation from the start, slow and deliberate, with layers of chiming vibe chords and a whining guitar, and then reedy, pulpy keyboard fills fleshing it out. The first line, so strange, powerful, and evocative: "Mama gripped onto the milkman's hand / and then she finally gave birth." This song moves and feels like a bad mood, like an inescapable bad day bearing down, yet at the same time providing the escape. I guess the word I'm looking for is "cathartic," but it didn't start out that way. It insinuates first as shrewd, doomy, intelligent pop music self-consciously slumming, slightly distant and above-it. Then it moves in for the soothing kill. It seems to know where I live.