Today I'm wearing my denim jacket for the first time this year.

I really appreciate having the extra pocket space, and it was weird wearing it outside... I felt like 50 pounds lighter. My winter jacket isn't even that bulky. Whatever. Everyone else in the city also seems to have noticed the nice weather, it's quite pleasant outside.

I use the term "International Hot Girl Day" to refer to the first warm day after a cold period. I learned the term from my software engineering group back in second year. I'm pretty sure it was Mike Bennett who was explaining it to me. It's true: the first warm day after a series of cold days, the girls all try to wear their pretty clothes for the next season. Sometimes they even exceed the temperature range for these clothes just to wear them on these days. For example, babydoll t-shirts without jackets on a 10 degree Celsius day.

I find it really funny that anyone ever called it "International Hot Girl Day" because it's not "International" at all. It's not even "National" or "Provincial". Even "Municipal" is sort of a stretch... "Local" would be the most appropriate. I still call it "International Hot Girl Day" as a tribute to the fine minds I've worked with in the past, though. I think I've passed the term on to lots of my other friends as well.

Yesterday I went into Sam the Record Man for a bit, and looked at the release board. Nothing too good was out in March, but the April list is really exciting. There was Garbage, System of a Down, Ben Folds, and Eels. I knew about the Eels release of course, but seeing it on the new release board was very exciting. I then found stopped to consider that it was really strange that I was so excited about a CD release.

This Eels album is going to be a 33-track double album. It's going to be really cool. I recently took some more time to appreciate the last album, Shootenanny!. Ain't no way I'm waiting until my birthday for this one. Let me explain the Eels albums a little.

1996: Beautiful Freak

The Popular Album
This album was E's third album, and the first under the name Eels. It featured the very popular single "Novocaine for the Soul" which was played a rediculous amount on Canadian radio in 1996 and 1997. Because of the single's popularity, it was put on a bunch of music club lists like Columbia House, and now everyone in the country owns it. After I decided I liked Eels, my sister gave this to me because she just knew I'd appreciate it more than her. It was my first, but this wasn't until 2000 or so.

This album also had the vaguely rebellious "Susan's House" which was a very popular single in Europe. When Eels toured in Europe, they got a disproportionate amount of love. This album was perhaps the greatest financial success (as "Novocaine for the Soul" is the only single that was ever so rediculously overplayed where I live), but it made E realize that he should just make his music and not appeal to popular music standards. Nice.

This album is best listened to when especially happy or especially sad. Many of the tracks are pleasant and uplifting, and many of the others are pleasant and evocative of commiseration. Track 10 ("Spunky") stands out as worse than the others in my opinion.

1998: Electro-Shock Blues

The Blue Album
"The blue album" is actually E's words, how he summarized this album during an interview that I read online once. Between the production of Beautiful Freak and this album, his sister attempted suicide twice (with the second attempt being successful) and his mother died from cancer. The music had less emphasis on reaching out to the people, and more on reaching within himself. The singles were "Last Stop: This Town" and "Cancer for the Cure", neither of which had much play here in Canada.

Some say that this album is a downer, and that it makes E sounds extremely depressed. That's a fairly good interpretation, but he said in an interview about the new album that making music about his personal demons ultimately saved his life. He figured he might have ended up like his sister. Most of the album's tracks are pretty depressing. In the songs about his sister's and mother's deaths, it is sung from their perspective.

This album is best listened to when you're sad. I also find I appreciate this album more when I'm not doing anything else so I can pay more attention... a lot of work was done with sampling and it's interesting to listen to this at a high volume to hear the detail in the instrumentation. In particular, "Last Stop: This Town" and "Efil's God" are interesting to listen to because you can hear the cutting from the sample. Most of the music is really beautiful. I'd honestly say that track 11 ("Baby Genius") isn't exactly wonderful listening, but it does help to fill out the theme of the album.

2000: Daisies of the Galaxy

The Simple Album
This is one of my personal favourites. This album doesn't have a long story like the last two, as it was a much less personal album. Like Electro-Shock Blues, however, it has an obvious theme both in sound and in literal lyrical meaning. Electro-Shock Blues was sort of dealing with the downside of life and death. Daisies of the Galaxy is an outright expression of a deep love and appreciation of life. Several of the songs are sung by E acting as other personae.

The instrumentation is fairly simple. There is less emphasis on the sampling in most tracks than there was in Electro-Shock Blues, and the "full" sound of Beautiful Freak is also absent. What's left? A few people playing some music and singing. Nothing wrong with that, right? My personal favourite tracks are "Daisies of the Galaxy", "Flyswatter" and "It's a Motherfucker" (the last of those was used by the Bush administration as an example of the horrible use of profanity in the music industry today -- it is a pretty evil song, isn't it?).

This album is best listened to when you're happy or as a relaxing agent. It works best in a well-lit room, and it's harder to enjoy to its fullest on weekdays.

2001: Souljacker

The Hard Album
This album is a stark contrast to Daisies of the Galaxy. The music and lyrics in several songs have an outright aura of anger, but there are also a few rather calming tracks. The album is essentially a series of characters: the dog-faced boy, the inbred serial killer, the bus stop boxers and the dude raised in the jungle among others. The lyrical theme is inconsistent, but the message behind the title comes out in "Souljacker Pt. II".

My favourite track here is definitely "Souljacker Pt. I", which is perhaps my favourite Eels song ever. The vocals in this album are great for the mostpart, particularly in "Bus Stop Boxer". The last track, "What is This Note?", is extremely hard and distorted -- the vocals are pretty much inaudible. I still recommend the track though because of the beautiful ending. The one track I really don't like on this album is track 2, "That's Not Really Funny". I don't really like the song, and I even sort of feel that it clashes with the album; but hey, a lot of effort is considered in those matters. Eels have a lot of B-sides, presumably because of careful consideration of what belongs on an album and what doesn't.

This album is best listened to when you're stressed out, pissed off, or you just really want to listen to Eels but don't want to listen to the other albums. I insist that it is the most different of all of the Eels releases, but there is certainly a place in my heart for it.

2003: Shootenanny!

The Quick Album
I was unaware of what this album was until I read the first real press release about the brand new (2005) album. Apparently they'd just been working on the 2005 album for so long that they wanted a break, so they took two weeks to produce this one. That is, this entire album was recorded in an extremely short amount of time (and my understanding is that most was written during that time as well). This happened to work pretty well, as I'd say this one is my favourite of the five albums released to date.

I like every single song on this album. I think that on my iTunes thingie, I've given every track 4 stars or more. My absolute favourite track is "Rock Hard Times", and even that is a pale shadow of how cool it was when Eels performed it as an encore at their concert in Toronto last summer. The guitar sound in particular is awesome across the entire album. The first single, "Saturday Morning", is a truly great song, and generally gets stuck in my head for hours at a time and puts me in such a good mood that I stop thinking and start doing stupid things. For some reason this has never actually occured on a Saturday morning (seriously, I would've noticed).

This album is always a pretty good listen. Eels have always used a lot of vocal distortion effects which are used in what seems a perfect fit in "All in a Day's Work". The falsettos on "Saturday Morning" and "Fashion Awards" are both very well recorded. The good news is that listening to the recording over and over doesn't destroy his voice like performing it every night on a tour.

Everything was great about this album, and the fact that it was recorded in two weeks is amazing.
This new album was worked on for over a year (I guess), so it has a lot of potential under its belt. I only hope that E knows when it's done.

To explain that last remark...
One time when I was in the studio for no reason, Adam showed me this rediculous piece of artwork that a sculptor had made. It included an excellent image of a crucified figure (sans cross), which I guess was Jesus. Adam said that, at the time, everybody thought this guy was great. The sculpture had an impressive amount of detail.

Then he added some twisted wire that showed a partial silhouette of Satan's head if you looked at it from the right angle, which was sort of around the entire Jesus figure. Then it was put on this garish ornate cross. Then those were all put on top of a bloody chessboard (literally). Then atop the cross was added an American dollar bill. Y'know, for symbolism.

Sometimes things are better left incomplete. The trick is knowing when things are finished.

But y'know, I don't think I'll be disappointed by Eels' "Blinking Lights and Other Revelations", out April 26, 2005.