The new Eels album has been a long, hard time in the making, as Rolling Stone reports:
Four albums, three deaths and eight years have come between the inception of the Eels' new album and its release this April. Fittingly, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, the band's two-disc sixth album, is an epic affair, or -- as guest Tom Waits described it -- "a Baked Alaska."
"A Baked Alaska," which Eels mastermind E translates, "He's talking about the juxtaposition between the lyrics and the music."
The album finds E dealing explicitly on record for the first time with a string of recent deaths among those close to him: his mother to cancer, his sister to suicide, and his cousin on 9/11, with lyrics like:
"Things won't get much better/Until they get much worse/I am stronger than the curse," he sings on "Checkout Blues," sounding like he is reassuring himself of something he knows intellectually but doesn't yet feel to be true. "Most of these songs are really me trying to comfort myself," he says, "and saying things that I want somebody to say to me."
Waits, an old Eels fan, insisted on getting into the cathartic spirit, crying, screaming, or bleating his contributions, but the trademark humor of the band is still intact:
"Humor has been how I've communicated since I was a little kid," E explains. "I was one part sarcastic little kid and one part completely introverted -- a strange mix, and much like I am now."
Blinking Lights and Other Revelations will be released April 26th, 2005. A complete tracklist has been posted on the Eels official website, Eelstheband.com.
In my opinion, two-disk sets are never a good bet for "masterpiece" status since there is always too much filler. For my money, Electro-Shock Blues was his masterpiece.
it's already on the internet if anyone's anxious, i got it on soulseek more than a month ago. all of my fellow eels fan friends that have listened to it are absolutely in love with it, even one that denounced both souljacker and shootenanny. give it a listen, i think it really is quite a fantastic album.
Keith
Oklahoma City, OK
August 2002
MAR 14, 2005 10:14 AM