- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
You’ll find Eels’ most revealing, autobiographical work-to-date to be the most beautiful break-up record since Beck’s ‘Sea Change’.
-
So in a sense the imperfections are actually its perfections because it represents E’s state of mind purely: his every whimsical thought, his waking up and not knowing how he’s going to feel that day and his whole-hearted honesty to allow every fucking shred of it be put to record because he has the audacity, intensity and conviction to do so.
-
End Times is a break-up album that lashes relationship breakdown onto societal collapse, and rarely has Everett sounded so plaintive, so utterly broken down.
-
End Times may be a tunnel with no light at the end of it, but the bleakness is beautiful.
-
End Times plays to Everett’s strengths, offering enough intrigue and wonder to keep happy listeners new and old.
-
This is a dark, sparse, elegantly--and enjoyably--somewhat mopey, paradoxical album. It’s emotionally raw, but devoid of self-pity. It's charming in its sense of irony and self-awareness.
-
End Times sounds like a record that could, maybe should, be performed from a psychologist's couch. But it's an intriguing dialogue nevertheless.
-
There is a fascination in listening to Mark Everett, the kind of fascination that goes with picking scabs or blisters, or the strange inspiration from feeling someone somewhere is going through a worse time than you.
-
Through a dozen terse, exposed songs Mr. Everett proceeds from bittersweet memory to guilt to resentment to a kind of acceptance. Even the glimpses of self-pity stay matter of fact.
-
Under The RadarThis may not be Elels' best record, but it's damn close to it, and a uniquely idiosyncratic deposit in an increasingly diverse discography that's getting harder and harder to ignore. [Holiday 2009, p.76]
-
MojoWith its stark arrangements, glimpses of social disintegration, and thirtysomething neuroses (see I Need A Mother), it really is close to a masterpiece. [Feb 2010, p. 94]
-
UncutEnd Times is not merely Eels' best album yet, but in the highest rank of breakup albums, something with the anguished fury of Ryan Adam's "Heartbreaker," sighing with the stoic resignation of Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel Of Love." [Feb 2010, p.83]
-
Q MagazineIf Noah And The Whale's The First Days Of Spring dealt with identical subject matter from a 20-year-old's perspective, 46-year-old Everett's tale is darker and more adult. And painfully brilliant. [Feb 2010, p. 104]
-
Alternative PressEnd Times is easily one of Eels' finest achievements. [Feb 2010, p.93]
-
Because every Eels disc feels like a breakup album, this overt and actual one may at first seem redundant, or worse....But this also may be his most universal work, and it's heartfelt and true
-
The album was recorded on a 4-track in the singer’s basement, and the lo-fi treatment certainly suits his grizzly voice. In fact, the downtrodden lyrics on the yelping stomper “Paradise Blues’’ and the jangly “Gone Man’’ are more or less redeemed by the songs’ sparsely elegant arrangements.
-
The album rewards those who listen with songs that are confessional but also insightful.
-
End Times will polarize opinion, winning as many people over as it will alienate, something E is ready for.
-
End Times is a kind of breakup album with Everett's youth that's both shimmering yet emotionally ransacked, and an affecting entry to his long catalog.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 20 out of 25
-
Mixed: 4 out of 25
-
Negative: 1 out of 25
-
GuyJan 22, 2010
-
Aug 19, 2020
-
CodyTJan 25, 2010