ALBUM REVIEW - EELS — COOKIE HAPPENED
WORDS RICK E
EELS
COOKIE HAPPENED
OUT 16TH OCTOBER 2026 VIA E WORKS / PLAY IT AGAIN SAM
Some songwriters spend an entire career running from sadness; others pull up a chair, pour it a drink, and ask how its day has been. Mark Oliver Everett has always belonged firmly in the second group. For three decades, the man known to most simply as E has turned grief, loneliness, and the plain awkwardness of being alive into some of the most quietly devastating, and frequently very funny, songs in American alternative music. Cookie Happened, the sixteenth EELS album, finds him in a reflective frame of mind once again, but this time the reflection is angled towards the light. Its title comes from an unlikely source of wisdom, Sesame Street's Cookie Monster, whose line "Me no cry because cookie is finished. Me smile because cookie happened" E has adopted as something close to a personal creed. It is a daft quote, and he knows it, yet it also sums up the record's central idea with almost embarrassing precision: everything ends, everything is eventually forgotten, and none of that cancels out the simple fact that it happened at all.
Every long-running cult band has a backstory worth telling, and the EELS story is more remarkable than most. Everett had already released a pair of solo records under the name E in the early nineties before folding the project into a band in Los Angeles, which became one of the first acts signed to the newly formed DreamWorks label. The 1996 debut, Beautiful Freak, and its breakout single Novocaine For The Soul turned a little-known songwriter into a familiar voice on alternative radio, and Britain took the band to its heart. What followed was 1998's Electro-Shock Blues, written in the shadow of family tragedy, a record that confirmed Everett as a writer able to stare directly at the worst life can offer without flinching or wallowing. His father was Hugh Everett III, the physicist behind the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, a relationship Everett explored in the documentary Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives and in his memoir Things The Grandchildren Should Know. Through a constantly shifting line-up, the band have since roamed from the lush orchestral pop of Daisies Of The Galaxy to the sprawling double album Blinking Lights And Other Revelations and the scuzzy garage rock of Hombre Lobo, the first part of a loose trilogy on desire, loss and redemption completed in 2010 by End Times and Tomorrow Morning. After a gap of almost four years between studio albums following 2014's The Cautionary Tales Of Mark Oliver Everett, they returned with The Deconstruction, and have kept a steady two-year rhythm ever since through Earth To Dora, the John Parish-produced Extreme Witchcraft and 2024's EELS TIME!.
This brings us to the new record, which arrives through Everett's own E Works imprint in partnership with Play It Again Sam. It was unveiled back in June alongside lead single Cap In Hand, followed in July by the paired release of All Forgotten and I'm On Standby, and in September by Congratulations To Me, meaning a full third of the album has been in circulation before release day. The sleeve, featuring a neon-green skeleton slam-dunking a basketball, tells you a great deal about the tone: mortality is very much on the agenda, but it is being approached with a grin rather than a grimace. Everett has pitched the album as a look back over the wins and the letdowns that make up a life, and at the oddity of having existed in the first place, and he has been characteristically candid about the vocal approach, explaining that he "wanted to sound kind of worn out for this one too." It also lands in a busy year for the EELS camp, with a first-ever vinyl pressing of the career overview Meet The Eels: Essential EELS Vol. 1 (1996-2006) arriving in the summer, a 30th anniversary deluxe edition of Beautiful Freak due on 13 November, and a documentary produced by Judd Apatow said to be in the works.
Clobbered opens the album, and it does so with a jangle rather than a whimper. Riding a ringing guitar figure that would not sound out of place on a 1966 single, it is a deceptively breezy way to begin a record so preoccupied with endings, and that contrast is entirely the point. The title suggests a knockout blow, and the song is unmistakably written from the far side of one, the voice of someone who has been knocked flat, picked himself up off the canvas and is now able to look back at the damage with something approaching amusement. It is a trick Everett has pulled many times over the years, wrapping a heavy sentiment in the lightest of melodies, and it still works beautifully here. As a statement of intent, it is a smart one, establishing straight away that this is not going to be an album of unrelieved gloom, and that the man at its centre has survived whatever it was that flattened him.
Cap In Hand remains one of the album’s most immediately likeable moments. Everett has described the narrator as someone who has made a mess of their life and is now trying to put things right, and the arrangement mirrors that perfectly: the bass skips along underneath while a little understated orchestration fills in the corners, and over the top sits that deliberately weary vocal, sounding every bit like a man who has run out of excuses. There is no self-pity in it, though, and that is what makes it work; this is a song about accountability rather than wallowing, about owning your mistakes and turning up at the door anyway. Released back in June, it has had a few months to settle in, and it sits even more comfortably in the context of the full album than it did on its own.
All Forgotten is the emotional heart of the record, and it may well be one of the finest things Everett has written in years. Opening on little more than an acoustic guitar before the strings swell up around it, it tackles the idea that sits at the core of the whole album: that one day nobody will remember any of us, and that this might not be such a terrible thing after all. Everett has said that "you can find the idea of your existence ending troubling or comforting," and admitted that he leans towards the latter, and the song carries exactly that sense of peace. That careworn, sandpaper voice sits close to the microphone, and there is real tenderness in the way he handles a subject that could easily have tipped into the morbid. Instead, it lands somewhere close to gratitude, a sense of amazement that any of us got to be here at all, given how unlikely the whole business is. It is the sort of song that stops you in your tracks on first listen and only grows in stature with every return visit.
Bamboozled Again lightens the mood, and the title alone tells you that Everett's sense of humour remains fully intact. Where All Forgotten looks at the biggest picture imaginable, the title points this one back towards the daily indignity of being taken for a ride, by people, by circumstances or simply by life's habit of pulling the rug just when you think you have your footing. It is lighter on its feet than its predecessor, and it carries the record's underlying optimism forward in a way that feels natural rather than forced. There is a wry, shrugging quality to it, the sense of a man who has been fooled so many times that being fooled once more is a comfort, a familiar old friend rather than a fresh wound. It may not be the album's headline moment, but it is a vital part of its rhythm.
Lost And Barking continues in a similar spirit, and it is one of those titles that could only really belong to an EEL’S song. There is something wonderfully hangdog about the image it conjures, a creature adrift and making a noise about it, and it fits neatly alongside the album's cast of bruised but unbowed characters. Everett has always had a soft spot for misfits and strays, and this sits squarely in that tradition, finding warmth and a certain dignity in being a little lost. Musically, it keeps the first half of the album moving at a pleasingly unhurried pace, maintaining the hopeful undercurrent that runs right through the record rather than dragging it back into the shadows. It is a modest song, but modesty has always been one of Everett's great strengths, and these smaller moments give the album its lived-in character.
Taking Pictures brings things right down to a whisper. Here the piano does most of the talking, and Everett sings with a softness that is rare even by his standards, his voice stripped back and vulnerable, the weariness of earlier tracks giving way to something softer and more intimate. The title suggests an act of preservation, of trying to freeze a moment before it slips away, and in the context of an album so concerned with impermanence and forgetting, that idea carries real resonance. It is a song about holding on, sitting right alongside an album that keeps telling you, gently, that you cannot hold on forever, and that tension gives it a quiet ache. It is also a reminder that, for all the jokes and the jangling guitars, Everett remains one of the great writers of the understated ballad, and this is a worthy addition to a long and distinguished line of them.
New Story opens the second half with a welcome jolt of energy. There is a dusty, roots-leaning swagger to it, with a ragged rock and roll edge that recalls the rougher edges the band have explored on records like Hombre Lobo and Souljacker. The title speaks for itself, the idea of turning the page and starting afresh, and the music has the restless forward momentum to match. After the stillness of Taking Pictures, it feels like someone throwing open the windows, and its looser, grittier sound adds a valuable change of texture to an album that might otherwise risk settling into a single mood. It is one of the album's most straightforwardly enjoyable moments, and it would not be at all surprising to see it become a fixture of the live set when E takes these songs out on the road.
Congratulations To Me is one of the very best things here and, fittingly, one of the strangest. Swirling and slightly off kilter, with a harp glittering through the mix, it sounds like little else on the record, and that strangeness is a large part of its charm. Everett has described its narrator as "someone who has reached a breaking point and is celebrating it, but not in a defeated way," and the song captures that sense of giddy liberation beautifully, the moment when you finally stop caring about all the things that never really mattered and find yourself floating free. It is a deeply EELS idea, toasting your own collapse and finding unexpected freedom in it, and it is delivered with just the right mix of sincerity and mischief. Released as the fourth single in September, it stands as proof that, sixteen albums in, Everett can still surprise, and that his willingness to follow a strange idea to its logical end remains undimmed.
One Razzle, One Dazzle turns to the counsel of Everett's late father, and it is one of the album's most affecting moments, a hushed, acoustic-hued song that feels like a private conversation. Given how central that complicated relationship has been to his work and to his own story, any song that touches on it carries extra weight, and this one handles it with grace. Rather than revisiting old wounds, it seems more interested in what was handed down, the stray bits of wisdom that stick with us long after the people who offered them have gone. The arrangement is warm and unadorned, keeping the focus squarely on the lyric and the voice, and the title has a playful, almost vaudevillian ring that softens what might otherwise be an unbearably poignant subject.
I'm On Standby is a love letter to the friends who show up, and it is impossible not to be won over by it. Arriving as one half of the July double release, it is a lighter, quicker-stepping companion piece to All Forgotten, and its message could hardly be simpler or more heartfelt. As Everett puts it, "if you're lucky you have a friend you're always there for and vice versa," and the song is a celebration of exactly that kind of bond, the knowledge that someone will pick up the phone at three in the morning and that you would do the same for them without a second thought. It has a big, open-hearted chorus that seems purpose-built for a room full of people singing along with their arms around one another. In an album so concerned with what fades and what remains, it makes a persuasive case that the people who stand by us are among the things that matter most, and it is one of the record's warmest and most generous moments.
Dum Dums begins the descent towards the album's close, and the mood darkens noticeably. After the uplift of the previous track, it is a more inward-looking and sombre affair, and the title hints at a certain frustration, whether directed at others or, more likely in the case of Everett, at himself. It is a reminder that the optimism of Cookie Happened is hard-won rather than naive; the record never pretends that life is all sunshine, and this track allows some of the clouds back in. That shift in tone is well judged, preventing the album from becoming too comfortable and giving its final stretch a weight and seriousness that feel earned. Fans who have followed E through his darker periods will find plenty to recognise here, and plenty to appreciate.
The Way I Was Made closes the album on a reflective, subdued note, and it is a fitting conclusion to a record so preoccupied with acceptance. The title alone suggests a kind of peace with oneself, flaws, scars and all, and it feels like the natural endpoint of the journey the album has taken, from the knockout blow of Clobbered through apology, wonder, friendship and loss, to a quiet acknowledgement of simply being who you are. It is a hushed way to finish, certainly, but not a bleak one; there is a calm resignation here that sits very comfortably alongside the Cookie Monster philosophy at the heart of the record. It leaves the listener in a contemplative place, and it is the kind of closer that makes you want to sit in silence for a moment before starting the whole thing again.
Taken as a whole, Cookie Happened is a mature, warm, and quietly profound record from an artist who has long since earned the right to take stock. It is not a radical departure; anyone familiar with the EELS catalogue will recognise the ingredients immediately, from the jangling guitars and orchestral flourishes to that unmistakable voice, now more weathered than ever. Some may feel that a handful of the quieter moments blur together on early listens, and the album's gentle pace means it is more of a grower than a grabber. But its consistency is a strength rather than a weakness, and its emotional honesty is as striking as ever. What sets it apart from some of its predecessors is the sense of hard-earned perspective that runs through it, the feeling of a man who has been through the wringer more times than most and has come out the other side with his sense of humour, and his sense of wonder, still intact.
Few artists have written as honestly about grief and survival as Mark Oliver Everett, and fewer still have managed to do so while making their audience laugh along the way. Cookie Happened is the latest chapter in that remarkable story, and it may well be one of the most quietly comforting records he has ever made. It argues, gently and persuasively, that the fact that something ends does not diminish the fact that it happened, and that there is joy to be found even in the knowledge that it will all one day be forgotten. Thirty years on from Beautiful Freak, E is still finding new ways to say the things most of us struggle to put into words, and that alone is reason to celebrate. Put it on, let it wash over you, and remember don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.
A wry, warm, and quietly profound meditation on mortality from rock's great survivor — proof that the end of something never cancels out the joy of it.
4/5
COOKIE HAPPENED — TRACKLIST
1. Clobbered
2. Cap In Hand
3. All Forgotten
4. Bamboozled Again
5. Lost And Barking
6. Taking Pictures
7. New Story
8. Congratulations To Me
9. One Razzle, One Dazzle
10. I’m On Standby
11. Dum Dums
12. The Way I Was Made
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