Eels’ Everett offers musical inspiration
Dupri looks back
NEW YORK, June 18, (Agencies): Since he’s written movingly about his family dying around him, Mark Oliver Everett understands why his band Eels is often described as a purveyor of depressing indie rock ‘n’ roll. Yet that would be missing the point of his work.
His music is ultimately open-hearted and life-affirming, a celebration of perseverance.
“Calling it a depressing band is like reviewing a movie that has a very heavy beginning but also has a happy ending — and you’re only reviewing half of the movie,” said Everett, who goes by the moniker “E’’ and is coming off the first extended break of his career. He’s had some awful experiences, “but I’m a genuinely happy person now,” he said. “I love my life and I’m so glad that I get to be an example for people.”
The shorthand: With preoccupied parents, Everett and his beloved older sister largely raised themselves. At 19, he found the body of his father — the quantum physicist Hugh Everett, who had died from a heart attack. Everett’s sister succumbed to demons and died of suicide. Just as his music career began, he nursed his mother as she died of lung cancer. Add a cousin who died on a hijacked plane on Sept 11, 2001, and it’s a mythic tale of misfortune.
Everett dealt with it through his art, most notably on the late-1990s album “Electro-Shock Blues” and in one of the best rock autobiographies, “Things the Grandchildren Should Know.” Eels music has been featured in several films, including “American Beauty,” the three “Shrek” movies and HBO’s “The Jinx.”
Everett
Change
It would be easy to succumb to bitterness, but Everett doesn’t. His band’s album, “The Deconstruction,” is the latest evidence, where on the song “Premonition,” he sings that “it’s not the weight that you carry, it’s how you carry it.” He embraces change in “Today is the Day” and togetherness on “Sweet Scorched Earth.” He compares a relationship to a cathedral, where “all pain and fear is on the other side” and “nothing can hurt us here.”
He’s not whistling a happy tune; his attitude is hard won. He feels the time is right for some compassion and kindness.
“It’s something the world needs so badly right now,” he said. “It’s also a note to self. I feel like the world needs more of that and so do I.”
Everett stepped off a music career treadmill four years ago, unsure when or if he would be back.
“If you do any one thing too much in your life it becomes apparent that you have to stop,” he said. “Normal people take vacations and get away here and there. I just never did that. I was too one-sided and I was forced to stop.”
During that period he did some acting, notably on Judd Apatow’s Netflix series, “Love.” He was married, and divorced, and became the father of a now 1-year-old son. It has been a wonderful surprise; Everett figured fatherhood would pass him by. “Things the Grandchildren Should Know” was, at the time, an ironic title.
He worked on music when the mood struck during his time off, but with no timetable, and returned when he had enough new material for an album.
“It’s so fun and exciting to be back at it now after a big palate-cleanser, if you will,” he said.
When Jermaine Dupri got inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, he was only the second hip-hop creator honored after Jay-Z. It’s not something he takes lightly.
“No matter what you want to say about my records that I created, no matter what you want to say about the artists that I’ve put out, I’m going into the Hall of Fame, and you can’t do nothing about it,” Dupri said.
Besides his induction on Thursday, Dupri has collected some other accolades this year, including The Music Innovation Award at the 26th Bounce Trumpet Awards, the Breaking Barriers Award at the 2018 Global Spin Awards and the Trailblazer Award at the 2018 Legendary Awards.
Throughout his career, the Grammy-winner has worked with a wide range of artists in different genres. He was one of the songwriters on Mariah Carey’s hit, “We Belong Together,” which earned a Grammy for best R&B song. As for his proudest moment, he mentions the “Confessions” album with Usher, or more notably the song “Confessions Part II.”
“I think that I can catch that magic with all the artists I work with long as I go into the project with the right mindset. And the right mindset is me understanding what my role is, and them understanding what their role is,” he said.
Earlier last week, he released a curated playlist commemorating the 25th anniversary of his So So Def Recordings label that features Jay-Z, Xscape, Aaliyah, Bow Wow, Anthony Hamilton, Jagged Edge, Ghost Town DJ, Da Brat and more. It’s currently available on Apple Music and Spotify. The digital album will be available on June 29.
Drake returns to his roots in the video for his song “I’m Upset,” which finds him returning to the scene that put him on the map in the first place, the TV show “Degrassi.” (Also last week Drake took to Instagram to share the release date for his fifth full-length album, “Scorpion”: June 29.)
Of course, the clip incorporates other narratives, and one is in the opening scene, where Drake wakes up in a bed placed in the middle of the the Air Canada Center, the arena in which his beloved Toronto Raptors play basketball. The sound of his phone pinging a reminder of his high-school reunion.
Sure enough, as soon as he suits up and hits the Degrassi Community School, sure enough, the old gang is all there:
Lauren Collins (Paige Brooks), Nina Dobrev (Mia Jones), Ephraim Ellis (Rick Murray), Shane Kippel (Gavin “Spinner” Mason) and others — even Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith (in character as Jay and Silent Bob) sell pot to the principal, who raps some lines from Drake’s song “Motto.” There’s also a possibly unintentional flashback to the 1976 horror film “Carrie” when a fire starts in the gym and the cast runs horrified out of the building.
The recontextualization of the song — which dropped in the middle of Drake’s apparently nowquashed beef with Pusha T — as a “Degrassi” throwback is a little confusing, but doubling down on that drama at this point would be pointless.