Reviews

Eels

Blinking Lights And Other Revelations (Disc 1)

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Review Date: 2005-08-08

You know whats weird? That I like the Eels. I mean I like an obscure non-high-octane band every once and a while, likely as a result of them surfacing in a depressing point in my life. Nowadays I usually decide to not go the route of sad music when I am sad because I feel its like throwing wood on a fire. I've decided the full 360 is the best way to handle human emotion in music, so I make my mood go from one extreme to the other. Anyways the point of my rambling is that its special that I consider Eels one of my favourite bands, they rank up there, I own most of their albums, in fact other than the newest double album I am only missing "SoulJacker". The Eels aren't a bad band, they just try to uplift the soul with songs that are almost like nursery rhymes with heavy sections of the music filled with keyboards and horns. Now amidst it all Eels tell a depressing story, usually one of the more frightful images you could ever associate with reality is what you get when you listen to the lyrics that E sings. He has a voice that almost sounds as if it has been hurt before, and not just once, so when you hear E sing all you can feel is compassion towards a man who has seen some shit. Now I can honestly say that any depression I have ever felt never reached the points that E has reached, so with that being said Eels is a saga of depressing proportions. Will this album be the same?

I should also mention to you that "Blinking Lights and Other Revelations" is a double album, I will be reviewing the first disc and Terri will be reviewing the second disc. The first song that I really liked on this album was track five, "Trouble With Dreams". It has an eerie beginning, opening with a ticking clock and then blending that in with some really creepy xylophone. I like what E does with the vocals, he actually seems uncharacteristically upbeat in this song, but to be honest I almost wonder what it would be like to hear a whole album of happy Eels. I don't know that the world would be ready for it, seems to me like the kinda things that would make heads explode because they couldn't compute that the Eels were doing uplift music for a change. Anyways the song does change from creepy to upbeat during the chorus, almost a night and day effect but not so much that its jarring and makes the song bad. I think that the transition is well executed, from past Eels knowledge, typically E is the producer of their songs so he knows what he is doing when he really wants a song to come together.

I have taken the liberty of reading some customer reviews on Amazon, and I suppose from everything I've read this album is a culmination of all the depressing events that ever took place in E's life. He basically made the double disc as a way of explaining how he has come to terms with all the tragic events that have taken place in his life. The concept to me seems ok because in theory that would mean this album is a combination of all the work he's been doing on Eels for the past seven years. Next track to mention is track ten, "Other Shoe". I must be honest, its not overly exciting at the beginning, its just E's vocals and a acoustic guitar in the background, which is a big problem to me since acoustic guitar isn't good to me at all really. Once they get to about the one minute and fifteen second mark the song spruces up and they add in the percussion and keyboards while E goes into some "OHHHOHHHOHHHHH" sounding cry. The song isn't that long, its just over two and a half minutes and has more of a build-up format to it than anything else. I would call it downloadworthy.

See track eleven, "Last Time We Spoke" is a good example of a reason why someone like me doesn't like this album. I guess it all starts with the fact that theres maybe two things in this song, the keyboard, and E's vocals. To make it even weirder and more hollow sounding they use the organ effect on the keyboard. I guess its just not a track for me, but theres a few other songs on this album that have this sort of format, or at very least they start this way and then move into something a bit less simplistic as the song progresses. If you want to hear other songs that are like this listen to track one, "Theme from Blinking Lights" or even track three, "Son Of A Bitch". All in all a track like this can't hope to win with me because theres not enough substance for me to pay attention to, I mean the other problem is that these songs aren't very catchy, usually the Eels amidst the depression are able to make a nice and catchy track, but no so much with these songs.

Track thirteen is totally decent, "Going Fetal". It starts off sounding like they are at a live show playing this song, but its clear its just a sound byte from sometime someone like The Beatles was on The Ed Sullivan Show. They shake off the live appeal after about the first twenty seconds, then they go right into it, theres a heavy contribution from the horns on this song, I would say its either that or the chorus that are my favourite parts of the song. Its a really upbeat song, sounds a bit more polished than some of the other songs but the positive to all this is theres a lot going on in the song which is better than some of the songs where E is crooning about some sad shit and theres like maybe two instruments being used in the song. The weird thing is that right after this song it goes into track fourteen, "Understanding Salesman" which is formatted simply and has E's vocals, guitar and I think violin as far as the music goes. This song is just the opposite of what was happening in the track before it, and truly that disappoints me, a lot like the rest of this album. I don't hate the album, I just was hoping there'd be a bit more for me to praise on it.

Tracks to Steal: "Going Fetal", "Other Shoe", "Trouble With Dreams"

Where does the depression end with Eels?

Does their style of ultimate sadness still hold true on "Blinking Lights and Other Revelations"?

Judgment Passed: