Eels - Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
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CD Details
Artist: EelsBrand: Baker & Taylor
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-04-26
Model: 00601091040625
Music Label: Vagrant Records
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Theme From Blinking Lights
- From Which I Came/A Magic World
- Son Of A Bitch
- Blinking Lights (For Me)
- Trouble With Dreams
- Marie Floating Over The Backyard
- Suicide Life
- In The Yard, Behind The Church
- Railroad Man
- The Other Shoe
- Last Time We Spoke
- Mother Mary
- Going Fetal
- Understanding Salesmen
- Theme For A Pretty Girl That Makes You Believe God Exists
- Checkout Blues
- Blinking Lights (For You)
- Dust Of Ages
- Old Shit/New Shit
- Bride Of Theme From Blinking Lights
- Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)
- I'm Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart
- To Lick Your Boots
- If You See Natalie
- Sweet Li'l Thing
- Dusk: A Peach In The Orchard
- Whatever Happened To Soy Bomb
- Ugly Love
- God's Silence
- Losing Streak
- Last Days Of My Bitter Heart
- The Stars Shine In The Sky Tonight
- Things The Grandchildren Should Know
Music reviews of Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
Music Review: Every Moment's Built to Last When You're Living Without a Past
Rating: 4 Stars
I wish I could imitate all the other reviewers that talk of Mark "E" Everett like he's an old friend, either wearied by this attempt or triumphant on his behalf. Unfortunately, this was virtually my introduction to the Eels' music, besides my vague familiarity with Beautiful Freak and its single "Novocaine for the Soul" almost ten years ago. However, anyone who knows me will say that constructing a dramatic story of the band behind the music and how it is evident in their style is the way I embrace the music's novelty. So forgive my pretension, but I will take the scraps I have gathered along the way and fill in the cracks because for me that is a huge part of what makes the music worth analyzing.
What immediately caught my eye before I heard Blinking Lights and Other Revelations was that it was a double album. I love double albums - traditionally, they are a very different entity from a single LP, and when they work they command that much more respect. You see, after months of pondering, I have had my own revelation of sorts: the best double albums will be the worst introductions to a band. If it blends smoothly into their catalog, they've done something wrong. I love The White Album intensely, but I wouldn't play it for someone who (God forbid) hadn't heard the Beatles! Essentially, to hold a listener's interest for twice the typical time, the music must transcend the usual standard deviations of genre and emotion; ideas shouldn't stretch the soon-to-be-proverbial leash so much as break it entirely. So in a sense, it was foolish for me to seek to get to know the Eels by means of a double album. Lucky for me, E is so used to the leash that ties his ideas together that he doesn't even know it's there. Suffice to say one should not release a double album simply because one has the capacity to write twice as many songs. Nothing holds the two discs together; the album is so consistent with a paradigm of identity that almost none of the songs really feel precious or ironic, there is no "Helter Skelter" or "Bungalow Bill."
That being said, it would be wrong to say the album is in a rut the whole way through. In fact, there's a very obvious alternation of pace and dynamics throughout, so well constructed that on first listen I was blown away by how easily it grabbed my moods. If you had told me then that with time I might not consider it one of the decade's masterpieces, I would have smiled, patted you on the back, and possibly made some snide and hyperbolic comment on your musical ignorance. But you'd be right. I've held many different points of view on the album since I got it, most of which I've seen shared by other reviewers. I toyed briefly with the idea that the mopey Sea Change-esque songs ("filler" some sites called them, but I disagree) should be removed to make it a single LP of up-tempo beauty. But would I respect the Eels as much if they seemed to rooted in one style? Would the highs feel as high without the lows? The answer to both of these is no. I may not love the hefty group of songs like "Son of a Bitch" and "The Dust of Ages" which contained at-first-appealing tunes for fresh ears and sparse instrumentation of organs and recorders, but I can't deny that they served as an amber shell around the glistening energy of the handful of brilliant songs that are the heart and soul of the album. Exciting to this day, I can't imagine the aural joy of these scattered tracks will wear off any time soon.
Strangely, what makes the songs so good is less the execution than the pervading attitude. There's a general atmosphere of someone who has embraced beauty in life, and this is a surprising shock to the system. But it makes sense. Sad songs are a dime a dozen these days and happiness is usually grounded in the escapism of drugs. The Eels' first album (back when they were a real band) was quintessential grunge-era angst, and that was before several member's of E's family died or got sick. Since the follow-up, appropriately titled Electro-Shock Blues, he's released several albums of confused darkness and orchestrated anguish, though without the assertiveness of anger. On Blinking Lights and Other Revelations he remains an existentialist, but a content one. He has not forgotten the tragedies of his life, but he seems willing to accept what is fate and confront what is not. The album's several varieties of title track paint even the sight of the blinking lights on the doomed airplane's wings (one of several causes of familial death) as having a sort of bittersweet splendor. Other song themes are similar: "I'm tired of the old shit/ let the new shit begin"; "Do you know what it's like to fall on the floor/ And cry your guts out 'til you got no more/ Hey man now you're really living"; "Was I wrong about the world/ It's a beautiful place." Specifically, percussion drives the songs. This isn't to say the drumming is particularly impressive, it simply has a forwardness, repetitiveness and resilience that makes instruments which normally seem placid (acoustic guitar, layered falsetto choirs, wind chimes) seem assertively euphoric. I can best relate this sort of sound to the less dark half of the Smashing Pumpkins' Adore, i.e. "Perfect." The catch is, on this album it's from a man who not two minutes ago was bitterly reciting "But when i get there and she sees me/ I'll be impressed if she does not run screaming."
His lyrics feel like an ordinary guy who is kept talking for hours. Sometimes he describes magic and love with crisp elegance, sometimes he seems to be awkwardly trying to get an undeveloped point across. Sometimes he is reassuringly profound, and sometimes he seems to deliberately dodge the task of poetics to show what kind of person he is. Line by line it's a craps shoot, but occasionally the listener gets a whole song of pure inspiration or a whole song of tired and rote autobiography. His voice, also frequently compared to Beck, is hoarse and a little nasal, distinct yet somehow not in the least bit irritating. It recalls the anger and angst of his harder-rock past, but perhaps that he has to some extent figured himself out by this makes us subconsciously proud that his voice remains unchanged.
Overall, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations is a fascinating album. It's quite possibly my most played album of the year so far owing to that first month of constant circulation, and yet I can't convince myself E is a genius. He has a great capacity to come up with memorable hooks, and he obviously wants to leave his mainstream popularity behind and join the ranks of acclaimed high-production indie bands in which only one prolific genius does virtually everything on the records. And yet, somehow, he will always be set apart from people like Andrew Bird, Dan Snaith and Colin Meloy because he isn't into theatrics. E's music is therapeutic for him, and thus what you get is a work that has been loved by the artist like a son, albeit with all the tics and flaws that a spoiled child might have. All told, E was unwilling to sacrifice his intense devotion for more distant and unbiased self-criticism, so you get an uncalculated child with all the variety of flaws you'd expect in a human life.
B+
Description of Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
A homemade epic, 'Blinking Lights'is an imaginative, emotional reflection on the condition of living, recorded mostly in Everett's Los Angeles basement over a period of several years. Sprawling over it's two discs are songs about faith, responsibility, growing up, dignity, disappointment, comfort, hope and renewal. It's the most personal eels album since 1998's Electro Shock Blues'. That album dealt with the nearly simultaneous suicide of Everett's sister and terminal illness of his mother, from the subjects' points of view. This album finds him a few years down the line, now battling some of the family demons himself, with the after effects of past tragedies becoming more of a personal issue in his adult life, sometimes fearlessly autobiographical, and other times built around the related stories of others. Vagrant. 2005.Blinking Lights and Other Revelations is a big, important record that's also devastatingly somber. Which, depending on how serious an Eels fan you are and the sturdiness of your psyche, can be taken as an endorsement or a warning. Shades of the band's superb sophomore effort, Electro-Shock Blues, recorded after the suicide of Everett's sister and the death of his father, show up here on such wounded tracks as "Checkout Blues," "If You See Natalie," and "I'm Going to Stop Pretending I Didn't Break Your Heart." Permeating those are instrumental snippets, some sad and ponderous ("Theme from Blinking Lights"), others bordering on bright ("Theme for a Pretty Girl that Makes You Believe God Exists"), and a handful of ironic exercises in straight-up pop (the winking "Going Fetal" and the cynical but upbeat "Hey Man [Now You're Really Living]"). Spread over two discs, the mood of Blinking Lights burns in fast and builds in its ferocity, so that when lighter moments like the funny "Whatever Happened to Soy Bomb" surface, they seem like ominous breaks in the storm. Though these songs make it easy to forget that Everett's gruff, fuzzed-over vocals have also graced fare breezy enough to be included on the Shrek soundtrack, their beauty delivers a thoughtful listener from caring. --Tammy La Gorce
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