Eels, Manchester Academy, live review: How E overcame the England game

E's onstage impishness is the real attraction of the show

Eels perform live on their 2018 UK tour (Matt Crossick/PA Wire)

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of Eels show, something typified by their last couple of UK tours.

When they hit the road in 2013 - supporting that year’s noisy, upbeat Wonderful, Glorious - mercurial frontman E and his band took to the stage decked out in head-to-toe Adidas, before delivering blistering sets that focused on the more boisterous side of their two-decade-strong catalogue.

A year later, they returned in support of the sparse and deeply personal The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett, swapping rock clubs for concert halls and tracksuits for three-piece tailoring. The gigs stripped things back musically to suit the tone of the new album. Although, that’s not to say that they were not fun; their last Manchester gig had E running through the crowd to offer out hugs, closing the evening with a version of "Flyswatter" that had him up on the Bridgewater Hall’s balcony, playing the organ whilst dressed as the Phantom of the Opera.

After a four-year absence (which E only half-jokingly attributes to a nervous breakdown tonight), there’s the question of exactly which Eels we’re going to get tonight at the Academy. The answer is a similar version to the one that last played here five years ago. The new four-piece lineup set their stall out early, opening not with their own tracks but with irresistibly fun takes on The Who’s "Out in the Street" and Prince’s "Raspberry Beret", which is enough to inspire a singalong two tracks in.

“What’s the score? The score is rock and roll!” is E’s mischievous response as news spreads that the England game has gone into extra-time; he might have had grounds for legitimate complaint on that front, though, given that large swathes of the audience spent the first hour of the set glued to their phones. When it filters through that England have won, a deafening cheer goes up in the middle of a rare reflective moment in the set, "I’m Going to Stop Pretending That I Didn’t Break Your Heart". It’s louder than any response the band get tonight. E plays it off coolly.

It’s a testament to the depth of the Eels discography that they can rattle through this many uptempo fan favourites – "Novocaine for the Soul", "My Beloved Monster", "Mr E’s Beautiful Blues" – and still leave out plenty of cuts that made their 2008 greatest hits collection, Meet the Eels.

It’s E’s onstage impishness, though, that’s the real attraction; the improvised jam that welcomes new drummer Little Joe to the band (“remember, you were all the new guy once”), the additional Prince and Brian Wilson covers during the encore, his wry references to his advancing age (“you don’t want this to be the night I die onstage, but just in case it is, keep your phones running”). He remains a great rock and roll showman; he might have been left rueing that late Colombia goal, though, with so much of the crowd then preoccupied with events elsewhere.