Eels - Shootenanny! (2003)

 SpinArt Records ■ spart 128

 

Released June 2, 2003

Produced by E

Reorded and Mixed by Greg Collins; A4, A6 by Ryan Boesch
Additional Engineering by Greg Burns, Alicia Guadagno

Mastered by Bernie Grundman; A6 by Dan Hersch

Side One:	Side Two:
All in a Day's Work Saturday Morning Good Old Days Love of the Loveless Dirty Girl Agony	Rock Hard Times Restraining Order Blues Lone Wolf Wrong About Bobby Numbered Days Fashion Award Somebody Loves You

The list of artists I've so far covered that I've listened to longer than Eels is relatively short and largely composed of the least surprising artists for me to have known for a long period of time.¹ I actually made my way into Eels fandom on the cusp of my freshman year of college, at the suggestion of my then-girlfriend, who owned Daisies of the Galaxy (in its infamously, hilariously self-censored version) and Beautiful Freak, both of which I owned before too terribly long after that, alongside their two closest temporal relatives: 1998's Electro-Shock Blues and 2001's Souljacker, which was still the most recent album at the time. A year later, this album was released, and you can bet, by then, I was picking it up right around the release date.

My Eels records are--somewhat shockingly--apparently the most valuable records I own. I don't own a ton (the others are the 2x10" Electro-Shock Blues and the last album, Wonderful, Glorious on the same format, but in a different colour, as well as End Times with its "A Line in the Dirt" 7" companion), but people will apparently pay a lot for them. It's less that it's shocking for quality or popularity, and more for the fact that it has felt more like the Eels crowd is shrinking than growing, so why they would remain so expensive when the audience is (I think?) dwindling, I don't know. Still, right now the only vinyl copy of this record listed at any sites I'd ever check to see if I want to pick up a record I can't readily find² is at one of three sites, and they start from $125 US. Yowza! That's almost ten times what I paid for it a decade ago!