"Oh it's lookin' up, lemme tell you what I mean"
So it's been almost a year since I've posted on here. I guess I just got busy. I've often had ideas for things to write about on this blog but just never really sat down and done them. I want to get back into this again though. There has been a lot of music I've wanted to talk about over the last year, and I thought to get me back into the swing I'll talk about one of the many tracks I've been obsessively listening to recently.
If you've read my first ever (admittedly long winded) post on this blog you'll know I'm quite a huge fan of a band called Eels. There isn't one bad release from this band in my eyes, because of the sheer diversity and honesty of each work. If I were stranded on a desert island with just one discography, it would be Eels.
So sort of around the start of this month I suddenly started listening to their album, 'Tomorrow Morning' a lot...
A brilliant collection of very simple, and still very honest songs. This album is very sparse on the guitar, unlike their previous guitar-heavy work, and is substituted with more string sections and pianos and synths, yet not leaving me wanting more guitar, as the album is so amazingly produced, with E's flawless musicianship at the helm.
Now the track (One of many actually, but I must only choose one) I've found myself going back and playing a lot is
'Looking Up'
The song starts with some gospel-like reverberated piano off in the distance, as if someone has begun playing in the middle of a large concert hall or church. The bass guitar comes in soon after with a quick walking bass line, along with some offbeat tambourine, and at this point we've already figured out where this song is going. I love how very sudden this song comes into the album, with no indication previously that this sort of thing could ever appear in a work of this style. It feels so spontaneous.
The song is very strangely mixed, almost 'un-produced', like the band set a single microphone in the middle of the room and just performed the song with the rest of the instrumentalists. The piano sounds off in the distance, and the bass seems to dip in and out in volume, but the vocals and the tambourines and percussion sound the clearest and the closest. It seems almost like old folks figuring out how to record their gospel choir recital with limited equipment, but of course the microphone must stay closest to the vocalists smashing their tambourines.
As brilliant as this track is, something feels off about the whole thing. It sounds like typical gospel sounding music, the tropes are there so to speak, the 'woop's and the offbeat-ness, but it feels like more of a modernisation of a gospel music. With the addition of the guitar and the drum kits it's like a modern church band taking over and tackling this style instead of a traditional gospel choir.
After a lot of listens, and putting this song in context to the entire album, it almost begins to make sense stylistically why it's there. Throughout the album in the songs leading up to 'Looking Up', to me there feels like a theme of desperation (Baby Loves Me/What I Have To Offer), almost madness, or an existential crisis (I'm A Hummingbird). Then as we reach 'Looking Up' it's almost like the narrator of the album has just said 'Fuck it, let's have some fun', resulting in this song.
So those are my thoughts. And I actually managed to finish a post without abandoning it after a paragraph, woo!
Thanks for reading, maybe I'll not leave it a year again till next time.
Ben
xox
