As mentioned before (away back in April 2019!!!), when I had a quick look at the Eels debut single Novocaine For The Soul, singer/songwriter Mark Everett had been making music for around five years prior to writing and recording material under the moniker of E and becoming an ‘overnight’ success.
This was an era when channels devoted to music videos were a huge part of the offerings on satellite television, with MTV2 being a great place to switch on at any time of the day to catch promos, old and new alike. Novocaine For The Soul had been a minor hit in America at the tail end of 1996 and the black and white video, in which the band appeared to be flying around a back alley in NYC while playing and singing the song, certainly captured the imagination. It was on heavy rotation and in due course, the song was picked up by radio stations, leading to it getting a big push by the record label and entering the UK charts at #10 in February 1997.
What I hadn’t known until doing a wee bit of research for this post was that the debut album, Beautiful Freak, had already been available in the UK prior to Novocaine For The Soul becoming a hit, and hadn’t done very much. It was, as you’d expect, re-released on the back of the hit single, at which point it entered the album chart at #5, eventually hanging around the Top 100 for over six months.
The sales of Beautiful Freak were assisted by the next single Susan’s House going Top 10 in May 1997 as well as by the band’s live shows and occasional appearances on TV shows, and not forgetting that the promo videos were still on heavy rotation on MTV2 and elsewhere.
A third single from the album, Your Lucky Day in Hell, did prove to be a case of just one visit too many to the well. It was released in September, a few weeks after Eels had played a well-received show at the Reading Festival, but a chart position of #35 would seem to indicate it wasn’t one that brought them new fans interested only in singles:-
mp3: Eels – Your Lucky Day In Hell
One of the highlights of the album, but such a moody and understated tune with a downbeat lyric wasn’t really tailor-made for radio play.
There were two other songs on the CD single:-
mp3: Eels – Susan’s Apartment
mp3: Eels – Altar Boy
The former was a radically different take on Susan’s House, the hit single from earlier in the year, with this remix courtesy of Mike Simpson of the Dust Brothers, which is why it is a close cousin to songs you’ll find on Odelay, the album released by Beck in 1996. The latter is a cover, a Rickie Lee Jones song, originally recorded for her seventh studio album, Traffic From Paradise, released in 1993.
Both are example of Eels, as they would do throughout their existence, offering up b-sides which added value to any single.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 