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Mark Oliver Everett—founder, front man and mad conductor of EELS, an ever-evolving alt-rock ensemble—has suffered from an identity crisis for much of his nearly 30-year music career. He came into the industry as a disaffected Beautiful Freak, his major-label debut in 1996; sneered as a bearded beast on Souljacker in 2001; and rejoiced as a life-loving survivor with last year’s Wonderful, Glorious. Along with these myriad transformations, Everett (or E as he is known to friends and fans) has become notorious for producing EELS records at a prolific pace—12 and counting, including five in the last five years—that often bear little resemblance to his previous works. With his latest EELS offering, The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett, he adds yet another complex character to his repertoire: himself.
Using his real name and unconcealed likeness on an album for the first time in his career, E elevates his craft to an intensely personal place where youthful exuberance disappears and the hard truths of experience are all that remain. He laments lost love on the agonizing “Agatha Chang”; grows old and wise on the stirringly eerie “Series of Misunderstandings”; and looks forward to a future in focus on the piano-drenched “Where I’m Going,” the album’s final track.
But Cautionary Tales hits a high note with the track “Parallels,” a thinly veiled tribute to E’s troubled relationship with his father Hugh, an influential physicist and founder of the “many world’s theory,” which touts a universe filled with an infinite number of parallel worlds and alternative histories. The theory, for which Dr. Everett was scorned and mocked by his peers after it was published in 1957, is now recognized as a crucial contribution to the study and understanding of quantum physics. Hugh Everett never lived to receive his recognition as a pioneering scientist; he died in 1982 of a sudden heart attack, years before the theory’s acceptance by the scientific community. The EELS bandleader would later write about the complex nature of his relationship with his famous father in his autobiography, Things the Grandchildren Should Know.
And I know you’re out there somewhere
And I know that you are well
Looking for an answer
But only time can tell
Parallels….
“Parallels,” The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett, EELS
“Parallels” has the familiar feel of a quintessential EELS track: soft and repetitive guitar, classical instrumental accompaniment and simple yet sincere lyrics. But what it represents is the growth of an artist over the course of a career, a maturation of self and soul found only in those who have experienced intense emotional pain and lived to tell about it, eventually coming to the realization that wisdom, understanding and contentedness with one’s past, present and future lives are essential to one’s happiness.
The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett suggests that after a lifetime of playing different parts, hiding behind personas and exploring worlds other than his own, Mark Oliver Everett has finally found himself—and he’s perfectly happy being E. ♦
