The ever reclusive Mark Oliver Everett caught everyone slightly off guard this year when he dropped two surprise songs into the world. Baby Let’s Make It Real and Who You Say You Are marked a triumphant return for Everett, who under the Eels band name has released some dark albums charting his own intense personal pain and loss since the group’s superb debut album Beautiful Freak captivated legions of listeners back in the mid-1990s.

Both Baby Let’s Make It Real and Who You Say You Are were from the other side of the Eels songbook though, the kind of loosely uplifting but maudlin lo-fi indie that made Beautiful Freak such a success. Both songs make it onto Earth To Dora, the thirteenth studio album released under the Eels name, and their first since 2018’s The Deconstruction.

It’s a record that follows on nicely from The Deconstruction, both albums that have the sense of ushering Everett and Eels back towards the light after their darker period. Opening track and new single Anything For Boo is an up-tempo starter, and that spirit carries into the Susan’s House-esque Are We Alright Again, before Who You Say You Are ushers in the familiar Eels sound and reflective mood with its stripped-back vocal and delicate guitar.

Dark And Dramatic is cut from the same cloth, a sweet mandolin-sounding line paired with Everett’s raw but low key vocals and violin to great effect, while Of Unsent Letters is the album’s heaviest emotional gut-punch, with the lyrics “Years falling by / Like the leaves dead in the cold / I've got a desk full of unsent letters / That I should have sent long ago / Dear, long lost love / It is me / The one who gave up” lingering long after the final notes have faded away.

OK strives for the same impact (“I got hurt / So what / That’s just how it goes”) but with its spoken-word delivery doesn’t quite land in the same way, but the charm, big riff and even bigger chorus of Baby Let’s Make It Real carries the record towards its triumphant finish. And a triumph it definitely is too – Earth To Dora is a welcome return from Everett and Eels and, despite the occasional foray into darker material, a strangely positive affair. `

Earth To Dora tracklist:

1. Anything For Boo

2. Are We Alright Again

3. Who You Say You Are

4. Earth To Dora

5. Dark And Dramatic

6. Are You Fucking Your Ex

7. The Gentle Souls

8. Of Unsent Letters

9. I Got Hurt

10. OK

11. Baby Let’s Make It Real

12. Waking Up

Watch the official lyric video for Anything For Boo here

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.