Release 16th Studio Album
COOKIE HAPPENED
Out via E Works / Play It Again Sam
Focus Track ‘New Story’ Out Now
Critically acclaimed rock group EELS have today released their highly anticipated 16th studio album, COOKIE HAPPENED, out now via E Works / Play It Again Sam. Available here.
The album finds E (Mark Oliver Everett) turning his gaze toward life’s small victories, inevitable disappointments and the strange miracle of having been here at all. Across twelve songs, it takes in mortality, friendship, regret and release, with the warmth, wit and emotional honesty that have defined EELS since their 1996 debut.
Focus track ‘New story’ finds E in typically wry, philosophical form:
“I’m always interested in how much we look outside ourselves for self-improvement verses how much of it is really only possible from within ourselves… Discuss”
Speaking about the album, E says:
“All of this will be forgotten. Every joy, accomplishment and hardship will one day become so irrelevant it will be as if none of it occurred. But as the great philosopher of our times, Cookie Monster once said: ‘Me no cry because cookie is finished. Me smile because cookie happened.’ This will all be forgotten. But isn’t it still a beautiful thing that it happened?”
The first taste of the album came with ‘Cap In Hand’, a warm-hearted, bittersweet track told from the perspective of someone finally confronting their mistakes and trying to make things right. EELS followed it with a double single release: ‘All Forgotten’, a sweeping, string-led reflection on mortality, and ‘I’m On Standby’, a warm ode to friendship and always being there for someone. The most recent single “Congratulations To Me’ sees E reflect on reaching a point where it’s time to stop taking certain things so seriously.
COOKIE HAPPENED follows 2024’s critically acclaimed EELS TIME!, which saw EELS continuing their remarkable late-career run with a collection of songs that balanced reflection, humour and hard-won optimism. With its latest offering, EELS once again demonstrates that few artists are better at finding meaning in life’s messiest moments.
