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Title: not quite as good as his eels stuff...
Review: but still worth owning. I don't own the followup, but if this is any indication, E's solo work previous to the eels had that same characteristic smart bitter, funny and sad all at once songwriting style to it, but with much more of a one dimensional singer-songwriter kind of feel to it that occasionally spoiled the proceedings by making things sound too samey. Aside from the cute instrumental "symphony for toy piano...", on every song he's backed up by an acoustic guitar, a keyboard, and a percussion track that may or may not be a drum machine, all of which sound like they're produced and mixed the same way in every song. It's probably not a coincidence that one of the key reasons E formed the eels was to get more of a full sound. Still, the songwriting is very strong as evidenced by tracks like "hello cruel world", "mockingbird franklin", and especially "you'll be the scarecrow"
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