2281. “Blinking Lights (For Me)” by The Eels
Album cover video:
I only have selections from one of The Eels albums, 2005’s remarkable Blinking Lights and Other Revelations. A wonderful, sprawling two disc album, this Eels album is a contender for my favorite album of 2005.
It also marks the tail end up my romance with compact discs. I know this because I have a selection of songs from Blinking Lights in my library as opposed to the whole album. See, when I first started using my “old” iPod Shuffle, I only loaded up the songs I most liked from CDs into my iTunes library. Indeed, this is how I’d prefer things be. However, when I buy new (MP3) albums now, I don’t have enough time to listen to them enough to make selections. Which means newer purchases are better represented in my library than older ones.
Anyhow, all 11 (of 33) songs I have from The Eels‘ Blinking Lights are winners. Really the whole album is worth listening to, so I recommend seeking it out on Last.fm or some similar source. Its a deeply personal album for The Eels’ central figure - singer, songwriter and pianist E. My friend Oopsthud introduced me to E way back “in the day” and so I owe him my interest in this artist.
Anyhow, we’re starting off with “Blinking Lights (For Me)”, which is subtitled “How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Airplanes, Car Accidents, and Psychic Pain.” The subtitle certainly gives some insight into the lyrics of the song - it seems like young E was in some kind of car accident as a boy and he got through at least in my part by thinking the blinking lights from the airplanes were a signal to him that he was going to be all right.
This song bears most of the hallmarks of this particular album. The music is fairly delicate, the melody strong, and E’s great singing voice is thick with restrained emotion - if such a thing is possible.
December 5th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
That is a sweet gentle song with lots of depth in meaning. It is also an excellent post that you wrote. Both the song and the post are on my nomination sheet for the Best of 2009.
December 6th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Cool! Glad you liked it!