Eels swim  in murky waters, come up on top

True to the enigmatic nocturnal predators that they are named after, the Eels have spawned a beguiling animal with a vicious bite of its own: their new album, "Daisies of the Galaxy."

Led by singer/song writer/guitarist E (a.k.a Mark Oliver Everett), the Eels muddy the waters of the pop music genre with eclectic sounds ranging from blues and folk, to break-beat and country. It is a luscious soup of sound for a shy creature like an Eel to thrive in, and for those who decide to take a dip, be prepared to feel the sting of E's bitter humor.

Previous Eels albums (Beautiful Freak, 1997 and Electro-Shock Blues, 1998) were comprised of therapeutic songs E wrote after the death of several loved ones and family members. The songs became so appealing to anyone dissatisfied with slacker culture that the L.A.-based band earned a wide following in both the United States and Europe.

On "Daisies," E is like the happy lush in the back seat, groaning out his songs of exaggerated woe, while Butch (drums) takes the wheel and steadily navigates the music through a labyrinth of dark emotions.
 

Butch and bass guitarist Tommy (they go by their first names only) layer dense slabs of percussion and rhythm behind E's Dylan-esque acoustic strumming, nimbly shifting tempos to keep "Daisies" from busting a gasket and grinding to a halt. It doesn't hurt when they sublimely inject pieces of sampling into the songs either.

If "Daisies" isn't wrenching your gut with songs like "Motherf--," (as in, "It's a motherf--/being here without you"), it's making you laugh at the man who "wears newspapers for pants/and a t-shirt that says 'Damn, I'm Good.'"

E's sad little stories, folk tales really, capture the lives of society's ghosts: the kid who works at Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick, the cut-rate mime and the bird-loving recluse. The inhabitants of the universe the Eels have created are the kinds of people who trip over daisies growing in the sidewalk; they are comical and delicate, J. D. Salinger-esque loners staring into the face of oblivion.

The musical crafting on "Daisies" is to be admired for its provocative simplicity. The Eels low-fi approach is a sneaky way of socking you in the gut with a dose of culture.

While "Daisies" is all over the map musically, it's flying well under commercial radio and MTV's radar, despite being recorded on movie mogul Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks label.