Tuesday, April 26, 2005

The Eels - Blinking Lights And Other Revelations

Since the sublime debut album "Beautiful Freak" The Eels have unfortunately been hit and miss. None of their albums have been dreadful, and all have had some killer tracks, but spiritual leader E has never managed to keep the consistency over a full set. The good news here is that E has finally done the trick...the bad news is that this only covers disc two of this special two disk set.

Again, that's not to say that Disc 1 is poor. In fact it is far from it with killer standout tracks such as Son Of A Bitch, Trouble With Dreams and Suicide Life, but it falls prey to the afformentioned inconsistency that plauged previous albums. However Disc 2 is perhaps the finest collection of songs that Mark Everett has ever put together. It's much slower and mellower than you perhaps might expect, but it is quite simply astounding from start to finish. I'm Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart and Ugly Love are probably the tracks that grabbed me immediately, but this disc is a rare thing of beauty.

It's said that E spent the last 7 years putting this together...well if that's the case, it was time well spent.

Icon's View - 4 1/2 out of 5

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