Boston Skyline Records

It shouldn’t be a surprise that EELS haven’t had a real hit since the mid-1990s. What’s more shocking is that they ever had a hit at all.This isn’t a criticism of the bandexactly the opposite, actually. It just means that EELS’s idiosyncratic lo-fi rock tracks aren’t exactly cultivated for a mass audience. They’re at times painfully personal, like 1996′s “Not Ready Yet” or 1998′s “Last Stop: This Town.” When frontman Mark Oliver Everett’s (who goes by E) spirits pick up, that comes out as well, such as in “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living).” Interestingly, that last track describes a recovery from depression.EELS will be bringing their unique brand of songwriting to the stage at Royale Boston this Friday. Tickets are 25, with doors opening up at 6. This is the band’s first tour since 2008, since which they’ve released a trilogy of albumsHombre Lobo in 2009 and End Times and Tomorrow Morning both in 2010. Hombre Lobo was a stripped-down collection of songs about desire, and End Times represented a transitional period for the trilogy (and singer). Tomorrow Morning represents a new kind of emotion: a type of cautious optimism, borne out in 3:00 indie rock tracks.Opening for EELS is the lovely Jesca Hoop, an experimental singer-songwriter who got her “in” to the music business as a nanny for Tom Waits’s children. She released her first EP, Silverscreen Demos, in 2004, with her most recent release, Hunting My Dress, in 2009. Waits describes her music as “like going swimming in a lake at night,” an apt description for her eccentric folk rock. Elements of the klezmer musical tradition also appear in many tracks.