Here are a list of 3 more songs from "Beautiful Freak" that will be music to your ears. Take some time to step outside your musical comfort zone and give these tunes a listen.
1. "My Beloved Monster" - I would gladly claim that this is an All Killer, No Filler album, but this song comes closest to troubling that claim. It's just not especially inventive from a band whose trademark is its inventiveness, and from a band that shows it in spades elsewhere on the album. Musically, it kind of chases its tail. There's the arpeggiation during the verse (which, for some unknown reason really irks me), and then a louder, distorted chorus. The gently sung "That comes from living in a world that's so damn mean" is certainly a nice moment. And the allusion to The Temptations' "My Girl" is a very funny touch. Again, not a throwaway. Just pales in comparison to the album's stronger songs. And it's sandwiched between two heavy-hitters.
2. "Flower" - First of all, what a great image. "Flower in a hailstorm". Secondly, and this what validates so much of the album, you can tell he means it. I don't mean that Mark Oliver Everett (frontman of Eels) really feels that "when I came into this world, they slapped me" or that he's seriously vowing that his abusers are "gonna pay someday" as the lyrics go. I understand that he and his narrator are different people, whether or not some part of himself informs the lyrics. But he sings "Flower" with such sincerity as to put you in the character's world. The instrumentation is not going to wow you, but it is intelligent in its subtlety. There are the drums that sound like a hip-hop backbeat. The choir looping in the background. The staccato ukulele, right before its choppiness can get under your skin, is pushed aside by the reverb-y guitar in the bridge.
3. "Guest List" - All of the songs on this album seem to deal in some way with alienation and being misunderstood. I think of this stretch of three songs ("Flower"/"Guest List"/"Mental") as a kind of Downer Trinity set apart from the other, lesser gloominess on the album. But that is no way a knock on it. In fact, I think you need these three downers in a row to get to the heart of the album.
And lyrically, you might need this song even more than "Flower", which I consider the best on the album. I wouldn't even say that the lyrics of "Guest List" are stronger. They're just painfully to the point in a way that "Flower" can't be because it participates in metaphor. "Wanna be of the beautiful people/Want to feel like I'm missed" just gets to the point so succinctly. But if the first verse is to-the-point in its honesty, the second is delightfully not. He "wishes he had his own walkie talkie" to "talk to God out of touch". It's just such a strange, interesting wish - sounding almost childish. Great lyrics. Great song.
