New Eels, Fiona Apple Tracks Hit the Web

New Eels, new Fiona Apple. Hmm, which one to listen to first?

Apple has been largely missing from the music scene since fans helped resurrect her career by demanding Sony release her 2005 comeback album, Extraordinary Machine. Now the piano-pumping ’90s icon has reemerged on That Was Then And This Is Now: A Tribute To Cy Coleman, singing Coleman’s “Why Try To Change Me Now?” a hit for Frank Sinatra in the ’50s. It’s kind of reminiscent of Sinead O’Connor’s album of standards, Am I Not Your Girl?, but possibly better.

Eels’ frontman Mark Everett, by contrast, has been everywhere these days, and every new project he undertakes seems to be more interesting than the last. In 2007, he gave us “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives” a documentary exploring the theories of his late father, a quantum physicist, and published an autobiography, “Things the Grandchildren Should Know.” Last year he cornered the market on all things Eels, cleaning out his closet with the double-disc Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities and Unreleased 1996-2006.

The Eels’ latest album, Hombre Lobo (Spanish for “werewolf”), hits store June 2 via Vagrant records. You can hear the first single, “Fresh Blood,” here.

“I wrote a song a few years ago called ‘I Want to Protect You’ that was about wanting to protect someone from the wolves,” says Everett. “Now I am the wolf.” Scary.

Fiona Apple “Why Try To Change Me Now?”