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This is a beautifully crafted, stripped-down recording, showcasing once more that E uses searing honesty and a canny sense of pop, rock, blues, and everything else to chronicle his own strange path through life and its labyrinth.
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It’s E’s lyrics that are the true, bitter joy of this record, sacrificing nothing of their wit in pursuit of heartbreaking, heartbroken directness.
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The album somewhat loses its steam halfway through, only because the flow starts to feel too predictable.
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MojoLean and timeless sounding, it's also as truthful as Everett's sobering autobiography, Things The Grandchildren Should Know. [Jun 2009, p.104]
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Everett's songwriting hasn't always kept pace with his musical and literary ambitions. But these tales of frustrated desire are vividly sketched, with the Eels delivering muddy roadhouse rockers.
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Under The RadarThis record is still pure E--invigorating in its obsession, desperation, vulnerability, and brilliance. [Summer 2009, p.65]
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The garage rock is fun, but the mesmeric admissions of loneliness and failings make this one to return to.
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This emotional rollercoaster of an album has a few cleverly disguised cliches similar to 'emotional rollercoaster' embedded in the music and lyrics.
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The theme is relatable, and relevant because it encompasses more than that one side of desire we all expect to hear about. This exploration and focus is what held together Eels’ 1998 masterwork, "Electro-Shock Blues." It does the same here.
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Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire is another record that hones and refines what it means to be Eels. Mark Oliver Everett continues his daring and heart-baring, and we continue to be the better for it.
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It's hard not to wish that there were more remnants of his earlier studio-nerd genius; there's the twist-beat and buzz-bass of 'Lilac Breeze' and the plod of 'Tremendous Dynamite,' but there's no build to them.
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The sound is deliberately barren. The guitars never quite fill the space, and the drumming (credited to Knuckles) often has the mechanized indifference of drum-machine tracks.
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What truly counts here is persona and with E casting himself as dog in heat, eager to reach a scratch that he just can't itch, the end result is yet another facet to a continually engaging and truly unique artist.
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Each track contains elements that sound similar in combinations of tone, texture and melody from previous records, so this album is not necessarily a knockout. However, the band’s artistic hybrid is delivered with a fervent honesty and steeped in an emotional intensity that may make it sound a lot like other Eels material.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 24 out of 28
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Mixed: 4 out of 28
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Negative: 0 out of 28
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Feb 7, 2012Wow, this is E at his best, every track sounds fresh and shows eels diversity, powerful stuff.
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Dec 12, 2011
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DavisW.Jul 20, 2009A bit of a disappointment, but a strong and solid record nonetheless. E is still the man.