Depressive sound not new for Eels

Just off the heels of Eels' first album Beautiful Freak and hit single "Novocaine for the Soul" in 1996, E, the group's singer, songwriter and guitarist, lost his mother to cancer and his sister to suicide -- not to mention more recently his cousin, a flight attendant on one of the 9/11 planes. The themes of the group's new two-disc album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations are, in essence, ones E's been dwelling on intermittently ever since familial tragedy.\nFor any single album, that is setting the bar high as inspiration. How often in a career can an artist say -- 'This is for my mom, my sister, my cousin'? At that point, it becomes a tribute to people the artist loves, and unless E had an unexpected flash of Dylan-esque inspiration, I imagine making an apt tribute for those people dearest to him was a heavy load to carry.\nThe best thing about the Eels has been that the world they depict wasn't always very pretty. While Elliott Smith might just roll over and go, the Eels' mixture of gritty spunk and narcoleptic arrangements usually ends on a hopeful note. E himself may be at the bottom, but if you're kind of miserable too and want company, there he is.\nBlinking Lights doesn't deviate much from the Eels' previous work. Their catalogue certainly follows a distinct formula and even though this consistence has kept me buying their albums, it also requires a particular mood with which to listen. The Eels perpetuate their frame of mind for as long as an album lasts, and that's the beat of the aggressively downhearted alongside E's Stereopathetic Soulmanure-period Beck-like vocals. As with any band that operates in that much of a formulaic fashion, Blinking Lights -- 33 songs, 93 minutes long -- offers more of the same. If you really like the Eels you'll love Blinking Lights, but don't expect something innovative.\nKnowing what I know now -- that Blinking Lights is noticeably long with definite highlights -- and with the way people digitize their music nowadays, I'd recommend buying the album and cutting it down to 14 tracks. Absent of the pitter-pattering transition songs E's stuffed in between many of the Eels' very best, this album would have had a candor and density to it mirroring Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Beck's Sea Change. Instead, what you expect is what you get, and that's the Eels. The same old Eels.