Sleepless nights with sick kids. Early morning flight. Hassles from airport security. A funeral. Not, you might think, the best preparations for sitting down to listen to an album. The thing is, though, Blinking Lights And Other Revelations is a record perfectly suited to a not entirely focused state of mind. Even the most hardened of Eels fans might surmise that a double album recorded by Mark Everett mostly in his own in his basement over the past few years might not be awfully easy going, especially as it deals with – amongst other things – the recurring themes of the death of his mother and his sister’s suicide. They’d be right. Well sort of.
Blinking Lights… is a record of wild mood swings, one that starts literally at the beginning with the childbirth of ‘From Which I Came/A Magic World’ and then tackles pretty much all the big topics in a big manner, with elegant orchestration bolstering Everett’s original recordings. Delve into its heart however (and this is a classic ‘headphones album’) and those lonely, solo roots begin to show themselves. His vocals particularly sound completely weary of the world; distorted and breaking amongst the often lush instrumentation. Maybe that’s no surprise when you consider some of the subject matter – titles like ‘Son Of A Bitch’, ‘Suicide Life’, ‘Last Time We Spoke’, ‘Old Shit/New Shit’, ‘Last Days Of My Bitter Heart’ etc etc speak for themselves.
The moments when Everett does break out of his darkness are a rare and joyous relief, with the sunlight streaming in through the almost Beach Boys-like arrangements on ‘Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)’ and ‘Losing Streak’. To be honest, at 33 tracks (including a few instrumental snatches) it all gets a bit too much by the end, but this is an album that challenges both the listener and the artist, and there aren’t too many of those around these days.