Mark Oliver Everett has gone through many incarnations, not just as Eels (and before that, as just E), but indeed also as everything from author to documentarian to actor. After touring 2014’s The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett (QRO review), he was burnt out and did other things, like played a hipster on Netflix’s Love, got married, got divorced, and had a child. But even as he tries to sum it all up, he returns to his Eels way in The Deconstruction.
Even as some of the subject matter has changed, Everett’s style has stayed on The Deconstruction. There’s his low-key wry nature on the titular opener, his gravel voice over pressing synths on “Bone Dry” and “Rusty Pipes”, intimate, stripped, and heartfelt in “Premonition” and “There I Said It”, and his upbeat, catchy rhythm with “Today Is the Day” and “You Are the Shining Light”. Some of the ways work better with the material than others – the gravel/synth and catchy rhythms are standouts, while Everett can get too treacle on intimate pieces like “Sweet Scorched Earth”. Also, the record probably didn’t probably need his church-like uplift in “The Epiphany” and closer “In Our Cathedral”, even if Everett probably did.
With fifteen tracks, including three sub-minute interludes, The Deconstruction is a bit of a grab bag, but Everett has always displayed multiple styles as Eels, and here has a theme running through it all.
