Seems like it's mostly small to independent record labels carrying the single. Seems more of a thing to be applauded than be considered annoying, no?

Applauded . . . yes, if it was fair. But picking one very hard-to-reach store in my entire state is a little ridiculous, no? There are several very worthy entirely independent record stores around the Tempe area, but they chose the one (VERY expensive) store located inside ASU - which means, on a busy school day, I have to consider how to get there during both my and everyone else's lunch hour. I can't directly blame E for that, but someone had to have made the ridiculous decision to only give this one store, in the entire state, this very limited item. It's one of those half-assed gifts bands sometimes give to fans - kind of "Yeah, we'll give you this, but we're going to make you jump through hoops to get it." Kind of like Wilco offering only a download of their EP to anyone outside of Australia. Which is why I've ordered a copy of the Australian version of the album which includes the EP as a real, bona fide, honest-to-goodness CD of non-compressed, non-lossy audio. (And the total was under $20 US!) If I wasn't such a big Eels fan, this would seal my decision about their new album without even hearing - I'd be skipping it, opting instead to send a message to the band telling them exactly why I won't be buying it. But fan that I am, I'll go against my anti-exclusionist nature for this. Damn.

Agree it's slightly suckage, but perhaps they made a deal with one distributor that just caters to the stores on the list.

Either way, we can both agree that the eels are great. :)

Duffy, I will happily agree with you there. :-)