Uneasy E

In the booklet with Eels’ debut album, the group’s three members are pictured with eyes the size of CDs. The distorted image reinforces the album’s title, “Beautiful Freak,” but more to the point, it represents the psychological underpinnings of Eels’ music--a seductive, jarring mix of self-laceration and soul-searching that has made the group one of the year’s most admired arrivals.

“Sitting in my basement and writing songs about what was going on with me was starting to get old,” says the group’s leader, Mark Oliver Everett, who operates under the minimalist pseudonym E.

“I started to want to kind of branch out. . . . A lot of artists fear therapy because they think they’re gonna get happy and they’re not gonna have anything to write about anymore. It’s done the opposite for me. ‘Cause I realize I’m not just gonna get happy, I’m just gonna become more aware and learn how to deal with things a little better.

“That’s why we have the eyes wide open thing. That’s why everybody in the picture has big eyes--it’s about opening our eyes and becoming more aware of everything.”

E, 30, calls himself “a complicated piece of work,” and as he sits over an order of drunken shrimp on the patio of a Silver Lake restaurant, he comes across as both baby-faced innocent eager to convey his enthusiasm, and tortured artist deflating himself with quips and ironic one-liners. Ultimately, though, his heart seems set on the high road of sincerity--as difficult as that is for a Gen-X head case.

“I don’t just make this stuff up,” he says of his songs of alienation and defeat. “I’ve been through some dark times. The fact that I keep going, keep tickin’, I hope means something. I hope that that can touch people.”

“Rags to rags and dust to dust / How do you stand when you’ve been crushed,” he sings in Eels’ guitar-rock anthem “Rags to Rags.” In the radio hit “Novocaine for the Soul,” whose quirky juxtapositions are more typical of his restless musical approach, the singer is so saturated with emotion that he begs for numbness.

“Susan’s House” imagines a refuge from the madness and mayhem he encounters on a stroll through his Echo Park neighborhood, and at regular intervals he traces his massive alienation back to the moment of birth: “When I came into this world they slapped me / And every day since then I’m slapped again.”

Tough stuff--but it could have been worse.

“These are like 12 out of 70 songs that have been recorded in the last couple of years, and some of them were just too dark. About my family and stuff.”

E cracks the shell of one of his drunken shrimp with a fingernail that’s painted dark blue.

“I didn’t put them on the record because they were just bleak, they were just relentless. I wanted to have stuff that was dark yet hopeful. Even if it’s just barely hopeful.”

‘Beautiful Freak” is actually the third album of E’s music to surface. 1992’s “A Man Called (E)” and 1993’s “Broken Toy Shop,” solo albums on the Polydor label under the name E, earned the singer-songwriter a loyal cult following, and he felt as if he was rolling when he got strong response as the opening act on a Tori Amos tour.

But the second album was a tough sell commercially, and when the record company was restructured, E was out the door--though the two albums remained in print, and now will be tagged with stickers noting the Eels connection.

“That was a very dark period,” he says. “I was crushed of course. All I ever want to do is be able to keep doing this, ‘cause I don’t know what else to do. I was always writing songs and always recording them. I really liked having a record deal and being able to keep puttin’ ‘em out.”

Adversity was nothing new for a man who’d struggled for equilibrium all his life. E grew up in Langley, Va., the son of a physicist and a homemaker mother who spent a lot of her time out doing volunteer work. It wasn’t a “Leave It to Beaver” existence.

“Well, it is hard to talk about because not everybody in my family’s dead yet. But almost.”

E giggles, then quickly catches himself. “I’ve just got to laugh, ‘cause either you cry or you laugh, and laughing feels better sometimes.

“I don’t know, it’s hard to talk about without sounding melodramatic or corny. I just . . . came from a family where we really weren’t emotionally in touch with each other whatsoever.

“We grew up in this suburb in Virginia, and it should have been fine, but it wasn’t. My dad was this genius guy that was just off in his own world. He was always there physically, but to this day I can’t tell you anything about him. I just didn’t know him at all. . . .

“There was two kids, me and my sister, and we were kinda on our own basically. . . . We had no idea what we were supposed to do with our lives, and my sister just kind of floundered through her life, and I just got lucky ‘cause I got music.

“You can just say I didn’t get enough love. I mean that’s the simple way to say it. People like that spend their whole lives working against it, making up their own memories. It’s just a really lonely, desperate way to live your life, you know. My sister finally gave up. Right before this record was released she committed suicide.

“I got an unexpected perspective from it, because it’s made me be really appreciative of music in my life. . . . I was starting to take it for granted, and I don’t take it for granted at all now. . . . ‘Cause if my sister had had something like this, it would have kept her going. It really is the only thing that’s kept me going. Without this I may have given up too.”

For E, the all-important “hopeful” side of his equation is embodied in the music itself.

“I think the part that keeps the songs from being unbearable complaining is the music,” he says. “It gives it this life-affirming quality. That’s what I think makes it different. Because if you just pay attention to the lyrics, you don’t catch on to the resiliency. The fact that I keep bouncing back is the important part.”

Eels’ rich, Beatles-esque pop component is seasoned by odd sounds, samples and incongruities, reflecting the diverse tastes and impatience with convention of someone whose key inspirations range from Prine to Prince, Sly & the Family Stone to Randy Newman.

The self-taught musician started out as a 6-year-old drummer, then went through a series of obsessions as a teenager, from Southern rock to pure country to soul. After dropping out of college he moved to Hollywood in 1986 and began passing out demo tapes, and eventually was signed by Polydor.

“Beautiful Freak” would have been E’s third solo album, but when he started playing with drummer Butch Norton and bassist Tommy Walter last year, he ended his long aversion to being in a band. Eels’ demo tape stirred a storm of interest among record labels, but Eels were drawn to the fledgling DreamWorks by the label’s respected executive team of Mo and Michael Ostin and Lenny Waronker, and the credentials of artists and repertoire representative Mike Simpson--a member of the hot production team the Dust Brothers (Beastie Boys, Beck).

“I really loved the way he was combining a traditional pop songwriting approach with this new technology and these odd, quirky arrangements,” says Simpson, who ended up co-producing “Beautiful Freak.”

“Here’s a guy who could have taken these songs and done them as a standard pop record and probably could have been very successful, but he was willing to put a twist on it and try to create something a little edgier. . . . From the onset it seemed like very potent and important material.”

Although E is loath to link his mental health to the arc of his career, his rising fortunes seem to be coinciding with a relatively upbeat period for him. He’s finding himself less reclusive and more a part of a creative community. Still, the misfit remains.

“I’ve always felt like a fish out of water my whole life,” he says. “I was always into the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place. When I should have been into punk rock I was into Lynyrd Skynyrd. I mean I was just directionless.

“I think I am sort of a product of the times, but I’m trying to represent the good part of what can come out of that too. We’ve got a lot of people my age that have been kind of directionless for their entire lives, the whole couch potato generation or whatever you want to call it.

“But I know that people are good and that they’re really trying. The simple fact of writing these songs, and daring to present them to the world that is perceived in them, to me is kind of a brave thing to do. . . . ‘Cause I’m really trying. I’m always trying to be positive, but I’m also trying to be realistic. Those are the two things I want to convey in the songs. I want them to be an unblinking slice of real life, but I want to emphasize that there’s a shred of hope.

“And usually it’s only a shred of hope. For me that’s all there is. But that’s all you need to keep going.”

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* Eels appear with Poe tonight through Tuesday, at the Roxy, 9009 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 8 p.m. $15.50 (Monday sold out.) (310) 278-9457.

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Hear Eels

* To hear excerpts from the album “Beautiful Freak,” call TimesLine at 808-8463 and press *5715.

In 805 area code, call (818) 808-8463.