REVIEW: With Too Much Tumbleweed In Their Blood To Settle Down, Being Dead Provides Grungy Salvation In New Album ‘EELS’
EELS EXPECTS YOU FULLY ON GUARD — Being Dead’s awaited second full album is an instantaneous sixties - Dolly Mixture vocal-esque Bonnie + Clyde renegade. I’m urged to paint my eyelids like Twiggy and don real cowboy boots somewhere out West. It’s genuine fun like that of legendary Motown performance — Diana Ross & The Supremes With The Temptations on T.C.B. in 1968 — impossible to fight a physical joy and everlasting in relevance. This release spares no expense of genre in a world seen through kaleidoscopic glasses.
Heeling a compelling and rainbow-tinted start, “Van Goes” features a bus driver’s gripes in a manner reminiscent of MF Doom’s signature comic-stripped universe. Without halt, clever and concise quips go hand-in-hand with romantically brash guitar riffs, touring a realm of questions you might ask when training for a marathon.
Tightly following, the latter end of “Blanket of my Bone” brings a güiro center stage, maybe unintentionally paralleling the relaxation found in the title theme for Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
This track fades sensibly into “Problems” — where the band describes a specific ode to darker aesthetics. A little more baroque in undertone, but still successfully whispering memories to lovers of Chapterhouse’s “Mesmerise.”
Listeners will find an inescapable motorcyclist’s attitude threaded throughout. With each dip into saudade, Being Dead’s polyphony vocals mime an appealingly boorish tug of war, leading surely back to the slight implication of risk in loving and the aura of daredevils. The raucousness of “EELS” surpasses any restraint of cliche. Home exists for punks, romantics, realists, and adrenaline-heads here just the same.
A track as tender as the night, “Nightvision” wades into calmer waters — reminiscent of Karen-O’s “Crush Songs” before the drum kick sets foot — and melts harmoniously towards numbers like “Big Bovine” to mark the second half of a blessed dance through the band’s dazed catacombs. As the curtains begin to fall, no buoyancy is lost.
Being Dead is our huckleberry for a masterfully designed rock and roll soundtrack filled to the brim with pleasure. The words beneath it all teem with satire and vulnerability alike. Is it realistic, brash, or masochistic? I don’t mind listening again in the morning in hopes of finding out. A generally open attitude, carelessness turned concern, and utmost respect for the wildness of mortality all litter the pen of “EELS” with flair. If seeking an excuse to harbor schmaltz amidst a maverick reputation or to let your hair down in a triumphant wind, you’ve found it here.
“EELS” is out September 27 via Bayonet Records.
CONNECT WITH BEING DEAD
