Blinking Lights and Other Revelations

iTunes Review

Mark Oliver Everett, who records under the moniker Eels, spent eight years writing and recording this 33-song, 94-minute double album, releasing several other notable albums in the interim. Blinking Lights, however, is a sprawling achievement that includes subtle instrumentals, quiet brooding ballads, and even a few, jarring dance moves. (For example, “Going Fetal” features a yelping Tom Waits and a rhythm track designed to throw out your back.) Lyrically, it delves deeply into Everett’s psyche, issuing thoughts on the love-hate relationship with his father, his mother’s death to cancer, his sister’s suicide, and his own hopes for the future, which mostly come courtesy of his wife. A glass-half-empty guy most of his life, Everett sounds like a genuine optimist during “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)” and offers a soothing apology for “I’m Going to Stop Pretending That I Didn’t Break Your Heart.” Throughout, his music is crisply orchestrated, with mellotrons and both electric and acoustic guitars supporting his parched vocal delivery. Blinking Lights often sounds like a man whispering from the basement, not wishing to wake the family or to draw too much attention to ideas he fears others may not find so appealing. Luckily for us, he’s chosen to share those fears, which are compellingly captured and delivered.