Leave your expectations at home.
That’s basically what E (Mark Oliver Everett), the frontman of Eels recommended to those who attend his upcoming show.
“That’s always the best thing to do, to be surprised,” Everett said. “That was always my favorite thing as a concertgoer.”
It’s a fair bet to say he feels that way as an entertainer, too. It’s almost too difficult to think of all the different performers that would need to be combined to create E and his often witty, sometimes dark, always enchanting work.
Although he considers music his true love, many may know him from his 2007 book “Things the Grandchildren Should Know” or maybe even BBC/PBS special “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives” a documentary about his father, internationally renowned physicist Hugh Everett III.
Yet E sounds as if he’d be just as happy to have those lauded side projects take a back seat to his music. Understandable, when you consider the passion and artistry he brings to his sound, specifically the CD “Tomorrow Morning” that is scheduled for August release.
Like his book, this final chapter of a trilogy is filled with personal stories and observations wrapped around electronic instrumentation such as drum machines and tape loops.
Although this album is very different from the first two CDs in the trilogy – “Hombre Lobo” which had a garage band feel and “End Times” that was more acoustic – it works as the end of one journey and the beginning of another.
Like “The Sun Also Rises,” the classic book by Ernest Hemingway, E named this CD with an eye toward the hope brought by tomorrow.
“They were all designed to stand on their own,” E said about the three discs. “The basic concept is hopefully universal, based on human emotions – desire, loss and renewal.”
In the same way, E tries to treat each concert as if it’s a singular event. No set lists and used-this-on-each-stop banter.
“I try to treat each like [I would a singular] album,” he said. “Many times, the songs sound very different than they do on the albums. I’m trying to put on the best concert I can that evening. People go through the trouble to buy tickets, find seats, and all of that. I want to give them something unique.”
