Eels - Daisies Of The Galaxy

Listening to the unbridled grief on Electro-Shock Blues was an unsettling affair, despite the album's beautiful pop-scrim setting. So one listens to Daisies of the Galaxy for the first time with trepidation--like willfully banging on your foot with a ball-peen hammer just for the endorphin rush. But if Blues was about the descent, Daisies is about the ascension toward a fragile health. "I'm feeling pretty good now," E sings on "Grace Kelly Blues." However, the music breaks and quivers with a kind of emotional instability, undermining his assurances. It's a tender balance, and no one registers the sad-happy yin-yang of life with tenderness quite like E. Which in some ways is pretty damned unsettling. --Tod Nelson