Grand and expansive veterans of widescreen loveliness dress down in t-shirts and jeans for an evening of precise and perfectly pitched awkwardness. James Berry stumbles forward.
09/06/2005
E, possibly America’s most celebrated depressive, almost didn’t make it here tonight, he got so worn down by the prospect of touring that he made plans to stay still for a long while. But here he is, because an emotional masochist can change one’s mind, up on the Royal Festival Hall’s buffed, hallowed boards, full of pomp and ceremony, in a 3 piece suit, leaning on a cane he doesn’t need, chain smoking and supping something from a small glass tumbler. Reminding us quite a lot, in fact, of when we saw Stephen Merritt (also lounging in the top 5 of America’s most celebrated depressives) on the same stage many years ago with his Magnetic Fields. But is he really as serious as all that now?
Well he’s got strings in tow, a quartet of elegant ladies in floaty dress, a double bass, and all the pianos he could need. It’s certainly a stab at lending his troubled songs a deeper maturity, a universal quality, a move away from the comfort-blanket gawkiness of the rock show he’s left behind. And it does work, immediately. Songs like ‘Spunky’, made more ominous and looming, ‘Flyswatter’, sounding like a woozy ghost dance in the orchestra pit, and the now more dignified ‘Grace Kelly Blues’, are offered a new gravitas by this treatment, drifting carefully with a higher brow of intent.
“Here’s one that goes way back to before most of you were born… 1996,” he quips, adding “ask your mom and dad, it’s one of their favourites. And the Queen’s. Whatever.”
So of course he couldn’t stop himself reverting back to some of the larking, even surrounded by such rehearsed grandeur. It is his comfort blanket, after all. And of his further quirks, the magnificently jaunty and daft ‘Birds’ really gets the rabble going (as much as they can in a venue where you have to politely wait for applause before you can take your seat) and he couldn’t resist a break with the convention of the night, cranking up the distortion for a lairy ‘Dog Faced Boy’ – again, apparently at “her Majesty’s request”.
But we probably shouldn’t be surprised that he couldn’t extinguish the aspect of his character that he built a reputation and career on, and it certainly results in us leaving the venue with as stiff a grin as at previous Eels gigs. Though that he couldn’t find utter consistency with this fresh presentation was a little disappointing in retrospect, especially considering how well the suit fits.
Relevant sites:
http://www.eelstheband.com/
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2004©