Style: Confessional, rough-around-the-edges bedroom pop; compare to Weezer, The Kinks, Tom Waits
Top tracks: “Little Bird,” “Mansions of Los Feliz,” “A Line in the Dirt”
“Everything was beautiful and free, in the beginning,” sings Mark Oliver Everett (aka “E”) on the opening track—and, thematically, everything goes downhill from there. Edenic allusions abound (“The Beginning,” “Apple Trees,” “Paradise Blues”), but End Times is actually a gut-wrenching divorce record—a man groping for a tether after splitting with his wife. Instead of turning to God, E takes comfort “in a dying world.” But the balm doesn’t stick. “I can’t see making sense of this world,” he croaks. Basement-studio quirks only heighten the intimacy of this homemade gem. This is brokenness, as real as it gets.
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