Hombre Lobo (12 Songs Of Desire)

About

The seventh studio album from Eels, <i>Hombre Lobo</i> (“wolf-man” in Spanish) is a collection threaded together — as the subtitle indicates — by the boundless topic of desire. The twist here is that the protagonist is the character of “Dog Faced Boy,” the hirsute subject of a 2001 track from the mind of Eels’ front guy and writer, E (Mark Oliver Everett). The dog-boy has grown up, and becomes the voice for E’s musings on unfulfilled desire and longing; it’s a lonely voice, and in the best of Eels style (say, <i>Souljacker</i>, home of “Dog Faced Boy”), it digs into the topic at hand with a variety of styles, each one superbly executed. A hollow melancholy lurks in the quiet spaces of pained confessionals like the stellar “The Longing” (and E’s personal favorite, “That Look You Gave That Guy”), while a simmering anxiety implodes in jolts of grimy, blues-inspired howling on tracks like “Prizefighter” and “Tremendous Dynamite.” The panting, hormone-fueled “What’s a Fella Gotta Do” and the stealthy, downtempo “Fresh Blood” are as far from the sweetly lulling “In My Dreams” as one can imagine, yet they all carry equal weight.

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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