Being Dead — the Austin, TX-based project of multi-instrumentalists and best friends Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy — presents the second single/video, ‘Van Goes,’ from their new album, EELS, out September 27th on Bayonet.
A moody and rockin, yet playful track, ‘Van Goes’ begins with a recording of a frustrated East Coast bus driver: “I’m not trying to be rude or any of that – this is for your own good and I’m not going to be traumatized because you want to be dumb.” The song then spirals into moments that sound closer to Devo, to egg punk, to unhinged weirdness; EELS is dotted with interstitials, little sonic collages of what sounds the duo simply were enjoying and creating. Listen to ‘Van Goes’ HERE & Watch the video below.
The accompanying video for ‘Van Goes’ explores this darker, devilish (and sometimes disturbing) side. The video opens on two aspiring midwives who rear a child named Shivalieo into a cruel world of lies and deceit. Shivalieo relives their highest highs and lowest lows seconds before taking their own life. “Our goal is simple. When you die and your life flashes before your eyes we’d like this video to be included in the reel. (Or at least lay a blueprint for how yours might be),” says the band. “Fast and furious is one’s life when betrayed. And in a flash, your whole life before you: everyone you’ve ever known, everything you’ve been brave enough to feel – extinguished in a twinkle of clarity”.
With the ‘Van Goes’ video and EELS as a whole, there’s the sense that Being Dead 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.
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. EELS feels like an album of possibilities, little tasters of what might be next, a vast and limitless stretching out before them.
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