This still sounds like it was recorded yesterday.
Artist, album and year: The Eels, Beautiful Freak, 1996
Why is it a Classic? : Lead singer Mark Oliver Everett has happily spent the entirety of his career carefully building a reputation as a cranky sod but the slacker cool brilliance of this track protrudes in its every beat.
To begin with, you really have no idea where the song is going to go at the start because it revels in contradictions with the playful and childlike xylophone juxtaposed beside the ominous and menacing strings.
Any doubt of its direction is cleared up on that wonderful moment at 0:40 as the guitars kick in, overlap each other and just keep building and building in a crescendo of chill.
Never before has a ‘paint by numbers life’ been so wonderfully articulated than the swirling riffs on 1:57 that almost resemble an immersive wall of noise that threatens to sweep you off the ground.
Everett doesn’t so much sing the lyrics as gives the impression that he just smoked 40 packs of cigarettes before mumbling them and who couldn’t love a song that states “life is good and I feel great because mother says I was a great mistake”.
Did you know? : Samples of the song were frequently used in the show Trigger Happy TV.
The lyrical hook: “Life is white, And I am black, Jesus and his lawyer, Are coming back”.
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