Random Records: Eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations (2005)
By 2005, Mark Oliver Everett had already lived a life full of triumphs and trials more than one man usually goes through - and mostly the latter. His father, a renowned scientist, had died of a heart attack when Everett was 19, his sister had committed suicide in 1996 and his mother fallen to cancer a few years later; his cousin was in that hit the Pentagon in the 11 September 2001 attacks (the plane coincidentally hit the wing that Everettās father used to work in). Outside death he had also generally lost touch with friends and collaborators over the years, most painfully with the longtime Eels drummer Butch, who had recently severed his companionship with Everett over something as dry as contractual negotiations. There had been flashes of light too, he was after all a successful musician with a couple of small hits and popular soundtrack appearances to his name, and though sometimes it felt like the universe was treating his life as some sort of a cosmic joke, things were starting to look brighter. He was in a long-term relationship (though unbeknownst at the time, that'd be over by 2006), his career had settled into comfortable success and he was starting to appreciate and enjoy the good moments more. It felt like a good time to reflect on the time flown past.
Everett had been candidly sharing his thoughts on life through his songwriting across the first five Eels albums (most notably 1998ās grieving Electro-Shock Blues thatās as much about death as it is about learning to smile again after a tragedy), but in the mid-2000s he started to look at his past more concretely. This period would see a flurry of various projects come to life, all which fed into one another in a manner that makes it a connected universe of sorts. He had been working on a documentary for the BBC titled Parallel Lives, Parallel Worlds where Everett took the time to understand his fatherās scientific work and legacy, while he also examined their personal relationship and trying to figure out who the cryptic and distant figure that he called father truly was. Simultaneously, Everett was writing his own biography (2008's Things the Grandchildren Should Know, named after the last song on this album) where he would put down his unrealistically eventful life and his bemused thoughts on it in a formal, non-lyrical manner. These two projects were linked with a musical project he was also writing and working on at the same time - a record that did no more and no less than try to sum all this up within one albumās worth of songs. Naturally, it would expand into a double album.
Blinking Lights and Other Revelations acts as the final movement of the first chapter of the Eelsā discography, bringing together every lesson learned and story already told under one set of covers as the by-intention "mother of all Eels albums". Across its two CDs the album moves through vignettes of Everett's life all the way from his birth, touching on all the losses, loves and tiny bemusements (like the dream he once had about a dance craze built around Tom Waits screaming - Waits helpfully appears on the song to demonstrate) he's experienced along the way. A set of leitmotif interludes help bind the album together, creating a sense of continuity as the songs move from ethereal ballads to naked confessionals, sunny indie pop and blissfully dreamy mood pieces. It's also a lush and orchestrated (though not necessarily orchestral) album, sinking deep into production layers to create hazy and dreamy sonic worlds around the songs - no doubt to add a tinge of perceived nostalgic tint into each track, almost as if they're being picked from Everett's slightly blurry memories and then cleared up for display.
Blinking Lights and Other Revelations is Eelsā magnum opus, as intended. From a career-contextual perspective it does what Everett wanted it to do: taking parts of all the other Eels albums to form a perfectly realised, beautifully put together experience of its own that sounds familiar but never repeats the past, apart from its lyrical insights. It sounds gorgeous, the songs are wonderful throughout be they heart-breaking country ballads, life-affirming pieces of sunshine, gentle interludes that twinkle for a mere minute before they disappear or freak-out bursts of energy that add a sudden spike of the unexpected on the record - and the front-and-centre lyrics are Everett at his best. It's an album where it's clear he put everything of himself behind it, to create something that could truly try to make sense of what was going on in his head and in his life and to honour that legacy with music that could hold it. The conclusion of it all, the aforementioned "Things the Grandchildren Should Know" where Everett closes all the loose threads and frankly talks about his life so far after spending a double album contemplating on it ("It's not all good and it's not all bad / Don't believe everything you read", as he says), might just be Eels' magnum opus song - an emotional gutpunch full of warmth, love and understanding.
As a quirk of fate it was my first Eels album as well (thanks to a mp3 of "In the Yard, Behind the Church" someone was sharing in one ancient forum's filesharing sub-forum in the good wild west days of the internet, which immediately pulled me in), but I wouldn't contribute that important first impression as the sole reason why I think it's Eels' greatest moment. For one, for the longest time there was no grand personal reason for it to hold that regard - the other albums were varying degrees of great in their own ways, and Blinking Lights simply carried some of my favourite songs in the back catalogue. Its status has also somewhat wavered back and forth over time as my own relationship with Eels has shifted (more on that later). But there is still a special sort of call it has for me, where it's the album I seek out the most when I'm in an Eels mood - probably something to do with how it was meant to be the quintessential Eels album and all. But the reason I ended up falling into a rabbit hole with this album recently, and the reason I'm writing this post, is because I think in my late-30s it speaks to me more than ever. I'm sure everyone's sick of me harping on about it but I've had a good bit of personal loss and tragedy in 2025 and, I don't know - this music and these words just hit differently now that I can have that personal comprehension of the emotional weight behind some of the topics. It took a good twenty years but suddenly Blinking Lights and Other Revelations feels personal.
Everett would follow Blinking Lights and Other Revelations with a couple of companion albums. First there was 2006's Live With Strings which captured the album's promotional tour on record, as he toured the country with a string quartet and a couple of multi-instrumentalists (the version of "Things the Grandchildren Should Know" here is the definitive one IMO, as Everett reprises the melody of the "Blinking Lights" theme in the end and bookends everything beautifully). Then the intent of summing up the Eels catalogue became more literal through both a Best Of compilation as well as a b-sides & rarities collection; the latter featured the hitherto unreleased āSaw a UFOā which includes contributions from musicians from across the Eels journey and kind of caps off the last decade in an indirect manner. But this act of exhaustive examination of his life thus far seemed to have the unintended side effect of bleeding Everett dry creatively. Eels have continued to release music at a steady pace all the way to present day and they have been operating with a tight and fixed line-up long enough to now officially call themselves a proper band, but nothing after 2006 has had neither the emotional heart nor the musical inspiration than the first six Eels albums. Everett has become a victim of his own tropes, endlessly repeating the same tricks to lesser effect and occasionally even threatened to sound like a caricature of himself. There have been a couple of better albums amongst the follow-ups, but overall Blinking Lights and Other Revelations has the dubious title of not just being the best Eels album but also the last genuinely interesting one - an album so quintessential to the project that there was nothing left to say afterwards. To prove the point, Eels are still in my Last.FM top 20 at this very moment because of how much I used to listen to them back in the 2000s, and merely a fraction of those scrobbles can be attributed to the post-Blinking Lights works.
But that's not the fault of Blinking Lights and Other Revelations. And even if Everett hasn't released much of note afterwards, he did release one of the best albums of all time with this one. So that's something.