Eels

Blinking Lights and Other Revelations

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Editor's Review:

With over an hour and a half of material spread throughout 33 tracks, the new Eels album is not exactly an easy listen. Frontman Mark Oliver Everett (or, more simply, E) continues to remain unpredictable almost 10 years into his career, as Blinking Lights and Other Revelations somewhat exhaustingly illustrates. The material itself, however, is not the surprise. E has tackled these genres before and the effective but limited range of his vocals can only vary so much. Rather, the shock comes from the album’s huge scope; I highly doubt that even the biggest fan ever thought they’d see a semi-autobiographical double-disc album released with the Eels’ name on it. The album is somewhat of a sprawling mess, even finding room for some odd guest appearances by the likes of REM’s Peter Buck and Tom Waits — the latter of whom is criminally misused, as E cheapens him to some lame vocal samples during the sarcastic “Going Fetal.” For all of its excesses and frequent moments of filler, however, Blinking Lights…is held together by the strength of its lyrical content. The songs are almost uncomfortably personal, sometimes bringing to mind the tragedy-inspired despair of Electro-Shock Blues, while in other places recalling the themes of hope and renewal, which were first hinted at on the beautiful Daisies of the Galaxy. It’s no surprise then, that E has been working on the songs of Blinking Lights…for several years now, because both the lyrics and the music, which E shifts constantly throughout, seem to provide some kind of record about where he’s been and where he’s headed next.
– Landon Moblad
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