Being Dead - 'EELS'

Being Dead knows how to make an entrance – within the first several seconds of EELS, the duo’s new record, the bright, hard-strummed guitar line on “Godzilla Rises” conjures cinematic immediacy, a creature emerging from the depths of the ocean in campy, freaky stop motion, fittingly so. Being Dead’s records are mosaics, technicolor incantations, each song its own self-contained little universe. And while the dreamlike EELS probes further into the depths of the duo Being Dead’s psyche, it is, most importantly, in the year of our lord 2024, a 16-track record that is genuinely unpredictable from one track to the next: a joyous and unexpected trip helmed by two true-blue freak bitch besties holed up in a lil’ house in the heart of Austin, Texas. 

There are a number of different origin stories for Being Dead floating around on the internet, most of which are immortalized in various press pieces they’ve done across the last seven years of being a band, and there will likely be more. Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy, the multi-instrumentalists and best friends at the center of the BD universe, deliver each story with a wink, inviting you in on the joke. 

And maybe they were actually born from a giant egg left in a meteoric crater, or they’re undercover on earth from an alien universe. Something about their music suggests it’s a dispatch from both the future and the past – vocal harmonies that sound like they’re reverberating in a medieval church to surfy guitar lines, weirdo-punky cacophonies erupting into chaos. There’s the sense that these are two people who are strangers to all that is banal - there is always fun to be had, a little mischievous magic waiting around the corner, if you know how to find or make it.

When Horses Would Run, Being Dead’s debut record released in 2023, took years to release. The final product was excellent but expertly polished, at odds with the live rowdiness they’d cultivated a reputation for throughout Austin and beyond across seven years of being a band. For the next one, they knew they’d have to do things differently.

They decamped to Los Angeles for two weeks to record with GRAMMY-winning producer John Congleton, writing songs for the record until days before they left. The radical shift in process was welcome - a good balance and a challenge, Congleton helping them find new ways to work and helping peel back the layers on the core of their songwriting. Being Dead has grown from a duo to a trio live, including bassist Ricky Motto (who is immortalized finally on record here, particularly in the giggles on “Rock n’ Roll Hurts”) 

The resulting EELS is a darker record, tapped more into the devilishness within, but it’s also a more raucous, rougher ride sonically. There’s heartbreak, excitement, enchantment, dancing – we move through it all at a high-octane pace. Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy never want to do the same thing twice on any song, and they don’t. From the pummeling garage rock distortion of “Firefighters” to “Dragons II,” which appears in its demo form taped on a hand recorder, it’s unexpected but intuitive, and, most importantly, singularly Being Dead.

There are some moments, like the refrain on the moody, rockin’ “Van Goes,” which begins with a recording of a frustrated East Coast bus driver, spirals into moments that sound closer to Devo, to egg punk, to unhinged weirdness. “Big Bovine” in its original form was a straight-ahead swing/country jam until it evolved into the droning, punkier final form - a testament to the way Falcon and Shmoofy’s collaboration works, pulling each other into different creative spaces.

EELS is dotted with interstitials, little sonic collages of what sounds the duo simply were enjoying and creating. The spacious, sleepy “Storyback Bay” into the buoyant and absurdist “Ballerina.” And there are moments of pure, understated prettiness – the acoustic pared-back  “I Was a Tunnel,” Falcon’s crystalline vocals massive and echoing, a melancholic hymn.

“Gazing at Footwear,” a genuinely perfect two-minute nugget of moody shoegaze both angelic and hellish at the same time. “We just love Duster and thought let’s do a really fucked up, David Lynch-y song that’s stuck in a well, and now it’s kind of its own thing,” Falcon explains, shrugging. It’s become a stand-out on the record for friends, an example of what Being Dead could do - and in that way, EELS feels like an album of possibilities, little tasters of what might be next, a vast and limitless stretching out before them.

Like its animal namesake suggests, the songs on EELS are malleable, the record like slithering through murky waters or strange half dreams, mysterious and beautiful in how it moves, reflective in a wavering sheen. Dipping into each song feels like uncovering a new cavern, plunging into depths unknown but fully open to what will be revealed. On the album artwork, an illustration by the artist Julia Soboleva, there are some weird disparate spectral creatures, a stark glimmer against a cloudy darkness. It’s a fitting encapsulation of Being Dead, exuding a welcoming, playful energy even if something foreboding lurks just beyond the pale – more out of frame that’s left to uncover, no path unexplored, strange and beautiful in the light.