It’s only been six months since Mark Oliver Everett’s last album, the scattered Hombre Lobo, but tragedy doesn’t wear a watch. Everett’s sparcely orchestrated divorce album is a bit like sitting beside him on the therapist’s couch, during late-night phone calls, looking over his shoulder while he writes in his diary. It’s messy, confused, honest and like Electro Shock Blues, where Everett worked out extreme personal grief, it’s scuzzy but beautiful too. Gratefully, Everett keeps finger pointing to a minimum, he’s almost apologetic in “I Need a Mother” when he admits, “I need a lover/not someone like you.” And he tells it like it is, with a shrug and a fun garage-rock guitar riff in “Gone Man.”
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2010.
