Before recording WONDERFUL, GLORIOUS, the last EELS album to be released, EELS leader Mark Oliver Everett called the band together to record a group of highly personal songs at his Los Feliz, California studio. Finding the process uncomfortable, he decided to take a break and reconvened with the band some months later to record what became WONDERFUL, GLORIOUS, an album full of spontaneous band collaborations. After that album's release and subsequent 73 show world tour, the band returned to what they had started all that time ago. 

The resulting album, THE CAUTIONARY TALES OF MARK OLIVER EVERETT, is an extraordinarily vivid and intimate document of a personal struggle. "It's inspired by something I went though," Everett says. "Someone I lost, by choice, and later came to regret losing. It wasn't until I started to look at my role in it that it began to feel like I was getting somewhere worthwhile. The experience transformed me. This is the musical version of that experience. I'm hoping it could maybe serve as some sort of example for others. To learn from my mistakes." 

Quite different to the previous EELS release, and in contrast to the high-octane rock n' roll of the last EELS tour, THE CAUTIONARY TALES couples a bare-bones lyrical intimacy with a live orchestra of cello, viola, violins, bassoon, English and French horn, clarinet, flute, saxophone, trumpet, musical saw, glockenspiel and celesta that lends a stunning backdrop to the brutal insights of the lyrics.

LP Tracklist:
01. Where I'm At
02. Parallels 
03. Lockdown Hurricane
04. Agatha Chang
05. A Swallow in the Sun 
06. Where I'm From
07. Series of Misunderstandings
08. Kindred Spirit 
09. Gentlemen's Choice
10. Dead Reckoning
11. Answers 
12. Mistakes of My Youth 
13. Where I'm Going 

Bonus LP Tracklist:
01. To Dig It 
02. Lonely Lockdown Hurricane 
03. Bow Out 
04. A Good Deal
05. Good Morning Bright Eyes
06. Millicent Don't Blame Yourself 
07. Thanks I Guess 
08. On The Ropes (LIVE WNYC) 
09. Accident Prone (LIVE WNYC) 
10. I'm Your Brave Little Soldier (LIVE WNYC) 
11. Fresh Feeling (LIVE KCRW) 
12. Trouble WIth Dreams (LIVE KCRW) 
13. Oh Well (LIVE KCRW)