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BBC Music

End Times plays to Everett’s strengths, offering enough intrigue and wonder to keep happy listeners new and old.

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Drowned In Sound

End Times is a break-up album that lashes relationship breakdown onto societal collapse, and rarely has Everett sounded so plaintive, so utterly broken down.

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Uncut

End Times is not merely Eels' best album yet, but in the highest rank of breakup albums, something with the anguished fury of Ryan Adam's "Heartbreaker," sighing with the stoic resignation of Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel Of Love." [Feb 2010, p.83]

Alternative Press

End Times is easily one of Eels' finest achievements. [Feb 2010, p.93]

The Guardian

End Times sounds like a record that could, maybe should, be performed from a psychologist's couch. But it's an intriguing dialogue nevertheless.

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Under The Radar

This may not be Elels' best record, but it's damn close to it, and a uniquely idiosyncratic deposit in an increasingly diverse discography that's getting harder and harder to ignore. [Holiday 2009, p.76]

Clash Music

End Times may be a tunnel with no light at the end of it, but the bleakness is beautiful.

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New Musical Express (NME)

You’ll find Eels’ most revealing, autobiographical work-to-date to be the most beautiful break-up record since Beck’s ‘Sea Change’.

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No Ripcord

So in a sense the imperfections are actually its perfections because it represents E’s state of mind purely: his every whimsical thought, his waking up and not knowing how he’s going to feel that day and his whole-hearted honesty to allow every fucking shred of it be put to record because he has the audacity, intensity and conviction to do so.

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All Music Guide

This is a dark, sparse, elegantly--and enjoyably--somewhat mopey, paradoxical album. It’s emotionally raw, but devoid of self-pity. It's charming in its sense of irony and self-awareness.

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musicOMH.com

There is a fascination in listening to Mark Everett, the kind of fascination that goes with picking scabs or blisters, or the strange inspiration from feeling someone somewhere is going through a worse time than you.

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Prefix Magazine

The album rewards those who listen with songs that are confessional but also insightful.

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Mojo

With its stark arrangements, glimpses of social disintegration, and thirtysomething neuroses (see I Need A Mother), it really is close to a masterpiece. [Feb 2010, p. 94]

Q Magazine

If Noah And The Whale's The First Days Of Spring dealt with identical subject matter from a 20-year-old's perspective, 46-year-old Everett's tale is darker and more adult. And painfully brilliant. [Feb 2010, p. 104]

Boston Globe

The album was recorded on a 4-track in the singer’s basement, and the lo-fi treatment certainly suits his grizzly voice. In fact, the downtrodden lyrics on the yelping stomper “Paradise Blues’’ and the jangly “Gone Man’’ are more or less redeemed by the songs’ sparsely elegant arrangements.

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The New York Times

Through a dozen terse, exposed songs Mr. Everett proceeds from bittersweet memory to guilt to resentment to a kind of acceptance. Even the glimpses of self-pity stay matter of fact.

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PopMatters

End Times will polarize opinion, winning as many people over as it will alienate, something E is ready for.

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Spin

Because every Eels disc feels like a breakup album, this overt and actual one may at first seem redundant, or worse....But this also may be his most universal work, and it's heartfelt and true

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Los Angeles Times

End Times is a kind of breakup album with Everett's youth that's both shimmering yet emotionally ransacked, and an affecting entry to his long catalog.

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Rolling Stone

Everett keeps these ballads and rockers short, spare and pretty; his sad reportage is straightforward to the point of being guileless.

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Tiny Mix Tapes

Musically, End Times approaches Everett’s best work yet, but due to its narrow focus and exhausting reliance on theme, it falls just short of it.

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Dot Music

In the long, twisted canon of break-up albums, Everett doesn't only miss the mark, but makes arguably the first serious misstep of his career.

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Slant Magazine

E seems to walk a fine line between triumph and disaster on every album he releases, and even if on End Times Mr. Everett falls pretty obviously over the wrong side of that line, it's as easy to blame the flop on a trick of probability than on a clear artistic trajectory.

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Pitchfork

A foreboding chronicle of the unpleasantness to follow, the typical arc of a break-up tale never materializes as "The Beginning" promises.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

Unfortunately, End Times comes off as impersonal and flat.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Cody T gave it an8:
A very heartfelt, personal record. Eels is a project that will never have the same commercial success as it did in the 90s, but the CRITICAL success should still be standing. Its a shame to see it isnt because End Times is a pretty damn good CD.

Niko B gave it a9:
I seriously love this album. It is his first that I could ever listen to the full album without skipping a song. Oh, and up yours Onion club.

Guy gave it a3:
Oh dear. How mediocre. There's no new ideas here. No new sound. No new sentiment. I've been on the Eels journey since Beautiful Freak, and loved many years of it. But E - you're right with the name of the album at least. This just sounds self indulgent and selfish. I feel like I'm just paying for your ongoing therapy. On this form, it may be time to grow up, move on and do something else. Honesty is the best policy. Sure you of all people would agree with that.

Steven M. gave it a7:
A very down to earth effort from Eels. The 90's alt rock band that once sounded, well, like a BAND, now sounds like one man (who is Mark Oliver Everett) in a studio spilling his guts out onto tape (which it is).

Ed gave it an8:
Unfortunately, The Onion (A.V. Club) come off as impersonal and flat. <-- Did they even listen to it?

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