On 2003's Shootenanny!, Eels frontman and songwriter Mark Oliver Everett seemed to approach his work with fresh ears. He cut through his own trademark lyric and production excesses (very evident on the wonderfully messy and rocked-up Souljacker) and came up with an offering of quirky, sparking tunes that were shot through with American roots music and his trademark power pop hooks, while never compromising his stubbornly iconoclastic way of looking at the world. The same cannot be said for Blinking Lights and Other Revelations. Over 90 minutes and 33 songs, E opens his own, personal Pandora's Box and lets everything out musically, lyrically, and emotionally. This is the most searingly personal album E and his ad hoc stable of cohorts have recorded since Electro-Shock Blues -- though it's not as unremittingly dark. The handsomely designed double digipack is adorned with familial photographs -- including a cover shot of his mother as a child. Strings, brass, tinkling bells, and gauzy layers of sonic textures stream through these haphazard songs. In fact, despite the appearance of family, childhood, changing times, and other concerns of personal narrative, Blinking Lights is not a unified album; its tunes are gathered seemingly willy-nilly conceptually. No matter; it is E's world-weary voice that holds the disparate parts of the album together in a loose, soft web that envelopes him and the listener. It sits dead center, allowing the tensions, textures, and moods to grip and release him at will. He expresses it all honestly, without immersion or unnecessary put-on detachment. It is his voice that gives the record a type of spiritual quality, one that seems to gauge lessons learned -- either with acceptance or rejection -- from the various truths revealed. Family and history are woven together over the entirety to create not only introspection but a sense of time's slippage, emotional and physical displacement, and grief that is offset in places by poignant humor. ... Read More...