Being Useless start their second album, EELS, with “Godzilla Rises,” a love music to Godzilla. This observe, like a lot of the Austin duo’s topsy-turvy tackle rock’n’roll, is absurd, humorous, and touching. The band virtually swoons for the King of the Monsters, recasting the protuberances on the creature’s backbone as “handles” for holding, a press release that would appear foolish if it weren’t delivered with a lot longing. The names of Being Useless’s two members, Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy (previously Gumball) are an apt signal of their abject goofiness. But irrespective of how typically Being Useless intention for the humorous bones, their phenomenally enjoyable music strikes the guts.
EELS is relentless, hooky, and thematically looser than the band’s full-length debut, 2023’s When Horses Would Run, which reveled within the mythos of the American West. That is music of nice particulars and big sentiments, through which a three-minute ditty referred to as “Blanket of My Bone” appears like being emotionally leveled by your first actual crush. Being Useless strike a fragile steadiness of principally indelicate reference factors: egg punk, cowboy kitsch, surf rock. Each band members sing, and both can take the low or excessive components on these scrappy however exact preparations—their voices name and reply, assert individuality, and are available collectively in unison. Their interaction is self-consciously, nostalgically gendered: “I’m not Prince Charming in Rapunzel’s world,” Shmoofy declares on unusually transferring spotlight “Dragons II,” and later quips: “There’s no perch in your hair/And if there was, I’d simply be pulling.” The album’s friction evokes a bevy of rock acts who harnessed male-female vocal rigidity: early ’90s indie underdogs Unrest, who counterbalanced scuzzy distortion and honeyed harmonies; or L.A. punk legends X, with their skin-tight rhythm part and the barreling back-and-forth of John Doe and Exene Cervenka; or the nanosecond when Pixies grew to become a heartland pop act on “Right here Comes Your Man.” Being Useless blow up their influences’ singing dynamics to fill 40 minutes, treating dueling vocals as a lead instrument in its personal proper.
The band could have toned down the western pastiche since When Horses Would Run, however the regional fascination stays. “Nation boys and nation ladies/Dancing underneath the Lonestar stars,” they croon on “Large Bovine,” and once more on “Ballerina,” a potent, nearly jingoistic picture difficult by the anomaly of oxymoron. Being Useless’s perspective smacks of Richard Prince’s iconic appropriated pictures of the Marlboro Man in the way in which the band reframes the uncooked materials of Americana barely but powerfully, turning moments of would-be grace into satire, whereas imbuing tiny particulars with the load of an enormous desert sky—or a lovesick teenager. EELS explores an ironic, campy sense of innocence, presenting younger, not sure characters on the cusp of realizing the difficulties of maturity. The narrator of “Issues” channels the wide-eyed, emotionally unschooled Speaking Heads from their early CBGB years: “How can I repair the issue when it’s with myself?” All through, Being Useless pack in tales of fruitless 9-to-5s, post-party unhappiness, and navigating emotions throughout a hookup, relating such ostensibly life like tales with a wink that provides a welcome edge to their fervent performances. They’ve irresistible allure and a Pavement-level knack for talking out of each side of the mouth.
