CD Review

It seems artists with monikers reflect a prolific outburst of songs. Take Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes, Damon Gough and Badly Drawn Boy or Mark Oliver Everett, who performs under the slippery title of eels. Working under the eels name since 1995, Everett has been turning out songs to the indie underground and has even captured Tom Waits as a die hard fan.

This time around, Everett, or "E" as he’s better known, goes above and beyond on his latest opus - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations -featuring two discs and 33 tracks clocking in at over nintety minutes and took eight years to complete. That’s a lot to digest for the skeptical, but it acts as a blessing for the diehard eels fan. For the emotionally tangled Everett, it all just comes with his role in the game of life. Music serves as his core therapy and his lyrics are a revealing book to his idiosyncrasies. Take his words in "Losing Streak" where he moans about his unlucky love life and admits, "where else could a creep like me/meet such a pretty face." Or take "Things The Grandchildren Should Know," where Everett wallows in his anti-social behavior and admits "I don’t leave the house much/I don’t like being around people." As the owner of a home studio, there is no denying Everett is a recluse and makes the record button a hot topic between brushing and flossing.

Blinking Lights excels in its low-fi recordings that make the most of Everett’s multi-tracking and effects. If anything, the recording suffers mainly from Everett’s sorrowful rasp that is bit much to take for 33 tracks. Guest appearances from Waits on "Going Fetal," John Sebastian on "Dusk: A Preach In The Orchard" and Peter Buck’s guitar and dobro offering on "To Lick Your Boots." ad color to the project and serve as a welcome addition. The loose instrumentals could have clearly been edited, but than again any Eels album has always been more a scrapbook than a polished piece of art.

With all the hard work, Blinking Lights is a bit expansive, yet its length and quirky lyrics allow us to easily forget the handful of forgettable moments. Albums like Blinking Lights prove that bands like Magnetic Fields, Wilco, Bright Eyes and Eels will age gracefully like a good blues artist, by becoming more renowned for their work long after their time is up.