After last year's uncharacteristically upbeat Wonderful, Glorious album, The Cautionary Tales… finds Eels frontman E on more familiar ground. Across an intensely intimate 13 songs, he sings of love lost, soul-searching, recrimination, regret and, eventually, some sort of understanding and coming to terms with the mistakes he's made. The music matches the mood, quiet orchestration replacing the neo-hard-rock sounds of its predecessor, with the exception of the beautifully judged wistfulness of Where I'm From. The subject matter may not be as harrowing as the real-life inspiration for some of his earlier work (most notably Electro-Shock Blues), but this is still a powerful and emotionally coherent set.