Eels: Blinking Lights And Other Revelations : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

For a double-disc set offering nearly ninety-four minutes of bittersweet, atmospheric rock, Eels' Blinking Lights and Other Revelations is exceptionally concise: Twenty of its thirty-three tracks linger less than three minutes. Killer melodies are briefly embraced, then abandoned for the next miniature marvel. A sequel to 1998's somber Electro-Shock Blues, Blinking Lights is a concept album about God like the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs was a concept album about love. Los Angeles songwriter Mark Everett sees the divine in isolated, existential drifters who populate gentle but incisive cuts like "Railroad Man" and "Understanding Salesmen," as well as within the crisis moments cataloged in the singalong "Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)." Whether generating string-laden instrumentals, buoyant power-pop anthems or stark ballads that ebb and flow on the first disc and peak throughout the second, Everett demonstrates disarming wit, tear-stained awareness and heavenly loser love.