An E please, Bob

`Goddam right, it's a beautiful day," sings E from the Eels on the current hit Mr E's Beautiful Blues. Which would put you in mind of that story about Samuel Beckett and a friend walking through a park somewhere; the friend remarks what a nice day it is, and Beckett replies; "I wouldn't go that far". The odd thing about the Eels, and especially their current opus, is the distance they've travelled over the last few years. When they first appeared on the radar screens with the mighty Novocaine For The Soul, they were all too easily filed under the "post-grunge, post lo-fi" rubric, given that most of the songs on the debut were characterised by the same tension/ release structure as that employed to great effect by The Pixies and Nirvana after them.

That album, Beautiful Freak, sold by the truckload - and the indie picture seemed complete when you considered that lyrically they were turned on by themes of alienation and depression and they were fronted by someone called E, who was routinely described as "enigmatic".

So what's so enigmatic about you, E, was my fabulous opening question to the man himself last week. "I don't know where people get that from," he drawls. "I just think that once you get called that once, you end up getting called it all the time. Maybe it's because I really spill out my life story in the lyrics, really lay it on the line all the time. Maybe it's something to do with me coming from an emotionally remote family. There wasn't really that much communication; it was a bit eccentric. What's that people say about British people? Stiff upper lip, or something like that - that's what we were like."

Which explains, maybe, why the band's second album, Electro-Shock Blues, which repelled many of their traditional fans, sounded as it did. It was written just after E's sister killed herself and just before his mother died of a terminal illness. It was all very Nick Cave but without the goth trimmings, and seemed to push the Eels back into the margins. It's all change, though, on this new album, which E (real name Mark Everett) describes as an "antidote" to Electro-Shock Blues. "It's more of a wake album than a funeral one," he says. Helped out by REM's Peter Buck and Grant Lee Phillips from Grant Lee Buffalo, it's a great set of tunes, full of arid wit and catchy hooks. At times, it even veers towards the jaunty - and while it's not as mosh-pit friendly as their very early work, it's getting back there slowly. "It's down to mood swings," explains E.

The band were first formed in the bohemian Echo Park area of Los Angeles and were effectively discovered by one of the Dust Brothers (the American outfit who made the British Dust Brothers change their name to The Chemical Brothers). What really helped them on their debut album was their ability to combine orthodox guitar attack sounds with hip-hop rhythms and loops.

E also proved himself to be a dab hand on the theramin, although strictly speaking that should be a dab hand off the theramin because the theramin is in fact, trivia fans, the only musical instrument you don't touch to make it work.

Originally from Virginia, E says that he has no problem at all flitting between musical styles as where he grew up, he lived on a diet of Led Zep, Merle Haggard, Ray Charles and Prince - and he says that he wouldn't mind at all being bracketed alongside Beck and Moby in the genre-bender stakes. "Goddam right, I wouldn't."

Daisies Of The Galaxy is on the Dreamworks label.