The Eels new album, *Blinking Lights and Other Revelations* is a two disk masterpiece that relieves my disappointment from their last album, Shootenanny. It was interesting to learn that Shootenanny was actually recorded during a break from the recording of Blinking Lights. With the weight and importance of Blinking, it is understandable that the Eels would use a break to produce a more carefree and less serious album like Shootenanny.

*Blinking Lights and Other Revelations* could easily be considered the second chapter of Electro-Shock Blues. Blinking finds E still wrestling with the emotional demons that spawned his Electro-Shock breakthrough. He explores the dark side with a blunt wit, and ultimately an optimism that could be easily overlooked. Optimism is the revelation that E is talking about in the title of this album. Lights go out, but their is comfort in the realization that they will come back on. The lights aren’t burned out, they are just blinking.

This will be the best album of the year. In my opinion, it doesn’t get much better than this, just keep in mind that Ben Folds is my favorite musical artist. After four long years of teasing us with a live cd and 3 EPs, Ben finally releases his follow up to Rockin the Suburbs. The live cd and EP’s were great, but it is nice to finally have a whole disk of new songs.

Songs for Silverman comes on a dual disc with a dvd side that contains some making of video as well as the entire album in 5.1 surround sound. I opted for the cheaper version of the disk, but there is a special edition version that contains a 40-page booklet full of Ben Folds’ personal photos. If you didn’t know, photography is a serious hobby of Ben’s. I am sort of wishing I would have shelled out a few more bucks for the book.

On Songs for Silverman Ben is backed by the same drummer and bass player throughout the whole disk. In that way it is closer to a Ben Folds Five album, but Ben’s palette also hints at flavors of country and jazz.

As usual for Ben, there isn’t a bad song on the disk. One song, Give Judy My Notice, was released on one of his EP’s, but the album version is very different, and in my opinion better. On Late, Ben writes a nice tribute to Elliott Smith, saying “The songs you wrote got me through a lot.”

My last observation is that after I had the whole disk imported to iTunes, I noticed that the album’s fell into alphabetical order. The order went Rockin, Songs, Speed, Sunny, and Super. The EP’s sound like they could belong on the album, and I could see a later release of this album containing all 27 songs. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I would like to think that maybe Ben is as obsessive about his music library as I am.