Feel free to skip the preamble and go straight to the video of the hot girl assassin

Being really good at your job must be a real pain in the backside. Not only would you be irritated by everyone else Constantly Doing It Wrong, but they'd ostracise you for making them look bad in front of the boss.

Mark "E" Everett has that problem. As the lynchpin of Eels, he's seen various band members come and go, all while churning out an endless stream of peerless indie-pop from his bedroom. The problem is, he's become almost too good at it.

Take, for example, his new song Spectacular Girl. If I had written this, I'd be over the moon. It's honest, heartwarming, catchy and tender - a perfect example of the suburban love song. But in the context of the Eels' past output - tracks like Susan's House or Your Lucky Day In Hell - it feels slight. Dashed off, even.

I suspect that the secrets of songwriting have, with years of practice, become second nature to E - to the extent that he can complete a song within hours of the initial idea popping into his head. Set up the drum machine, sketch out the verse, add a rise before the chorus, switch around the chord structure for the middle eight, double track the vocals, add strings for emphasis, tap it three times with the magic wand and, Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Busy, a finished single!

But if you come to rely too heavily on these tricks, you're in danger of stagnating. One of the most successful songwriters of the last 30 years, Jimmy Jam, says that he buys a new keyboard every time he starts working on a project. That way, he's forced onto the back foot. Learning new software and playing with new sounds leads to mistakes, which leads to discoveries, which leads to innovation.

(There's probably a lesson in there for any of us who've been stuck in the same job for too long...)

This is kinda sorta the message of the video for Spectacular Girl. It stars a secretary who is stifled by her job, and takes up night work that harnesses her hidden talents (one of those talents is the ability to change into skintight leather trousers during a 15-storey elevator ride, which is probably enough to get you your own reality show these days.)

It looks like this:

Eels - Spectacular Girl


The Eels' new album - Tomorrow Morning - is out on 24 August. It's their third in 12 months, which should really make Kate Bush feel ashamed of herself.

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Eels are away with the birds

It's, what, five months since Mark Oliver Everett released his last album, Hombre Loco, and now he's back with an entirely new batch of recordings, End Times.

"Prolific" musicians are usually just workaholics with no sense of quality control - but there is always something worth listening to on an Eels album. Everett has a simple philosophy about the importance of melody. "Show me a kid who innately doesn’t like the Beatles," he wrote in his autobiography, Things The Grandchildren Should Know, "and I’ll show you a bad seed".

The first single from the new album is called Little Bird, and it's a prime example of that mantra - a deceptively simple, hauntingly pretty lament from a man with a broken heart. It might be a bit Eels-o-matic but, for once, that is not a bad thing.


:: Eels Little Bird

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New video frenzy

There are so many new videos floating around today that you could be forgiven for thinking everyone had come back from their summer holidays and remembered that they make music for a living. But it's probably just a coincidence, right? Right?

In descending order of brilliance, then.

1) Eels - The Look You Give That Guy
In which Mark Oliver Everett is jealous of his dog because it is getting lots of attention from Salman Rushdie's wife. The final scene is one of the most digusting things you will ever see.



2) Radiohead at the Reading Festival
They do a (practically unrecognisable) cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Maps, sollowed by a stunning version of Everything In Its Right Place. I will never tire of this song.

Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place


3) Madonna - Celebration
The weird dance remix suggests this won't be the last video we see for this song, but the bit where Lourdes is dressed up like her mum in the Like A Virgin days made us do an "awwww", followed by a "ewwww".



4) The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition
Essentially a cool, indie version of I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper.

Like Passion Pit, the Temper Trap have used the formula "emotion + hole in the ground" to invent a band name. We're looking forward to their forthcoming world tour woth Rage Chasm, Exasperated Trench and Happy Shaft. The t-shirts will be awesome.

The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition


5) Basement Jaxx & Sam Sparro - Feelings Gone
As the guys Hard Candy pointed out, this looks like an episode of 80s children's TV classic Button Moon, only with worse music.

Basement Jaxx - Feelings Gone


6) Kylie - Chiggy Wiggy
This one is just weird. Really, really weird.

Kylie - Chiggy Wiggy (from the Bollywood movie Blue)

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New music roundup

It's been a while since I've trawled the blogs to bring you some new music that other people have stolen and uploaded. Let me correct the error forthwith.

:: Little Boots - New In Town (Fred Falke Remix). Little Victoria Hesketh has been unusually quiet since she was named the "Sound of 2009" back in January (although the Guardian's interactive graph of new bands suggests she's still outperforming her rivals), but here is her first proper single of the year in slammin' remix form.

:: Fiona Apple - Why Try To Change Me Now? . Exquisite jazzy cover version of the old Cy Coleman track. Delicious.

:: Eels - Fresh Blood. Werewolf-themed potboiler from Mark Oliver Everett's first new album in four years.

:: Coldplay - Viva La Vida (DiscoTech Mix). Terrible indie bollocks rescued by ridonculous acid house synths.

:: Fischerspooner - Supply & Demand. Moody electronic noodling direct from a 1980s Pet Shop Boys b-side. Not entirely unpleasant.

:: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero (NASA remix). Completely inessential compared to the original, yet oddly compelling when cycling into work.

:: Peter Bjorn & John - Nothing To Worry About. A hybrid of Royksopp and Go Team this will frighten fans of Young Folks but delight people who like Lykke Li.

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