With a cartoon-gravelly voice and a grim but gently whimsical worldview, Eels boss Mark Oliver Everett made the '90s bearable for sweet slacker depressives like himself, from "Novocaine for the Soul" to "It's a Motherf*cker" to that Shrek song. Wonderful, Glorious splits the difference between ramshackle alt-rock vigor ("I'm up for the fight," he snarls, perhaps eyeing his younger, hippier indie peers) and Merle Haggard-style grouchy bromides: "You're all gonna be sorry/ When I leave town/ And get it together/ For the turnaround." The album title is exactly 50 percent sarcastic.