It’s been four years since Eels’ last studio album, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, although Mark Everett, aka E, has hardly been slacking. He’s written his autobiography, Things the Grandchildren Should Know, and made a television documentary about his relationship with his quantum physicist father, Hugh Everett III, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives. Perhaps all this self-examination has led to the decision to sing Hombre Lobo not as himself but in character. Not that this is some glamorous Ziggy Stardust confection; E’s mouthpiece here is a man on the edge of society, burnt up with desire for a woman he has no idea how to approach. E has suggested that he might be the Dog Faced Boy we first met on the Souljacker album, but now he’s all grown up. From song to song, our perspective on this character changes dramatically. Is he a dangerous stalker or an eerie urban werewolf (“After the fires, before the flood/Sweet baby, I need fresh blood”)? Is he just a shy, sad, lonely man lacking in self-confidence (“That look you gave that guy/I want to see looking right at me”)? Or is he someone who will finally turn all his pent-up emotion against himself (“When I say I would die for her/It’s not just words”). There are few songwriters who could handle this material better than E — actually, perhaps there aren’t any — and the shifts in perspective allow him to move from raucous, distorted rock to heartbreaking ballads, bringing energy and variety to a story that can’t possibly end well . . . or can it?

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