Eyelids

EYELIDS: Eyelids’ new album, A Colossal Waste of Light, does an excellent job of framing the quintet as one of today’s most compelling purveyors of lopsided guitar pop workouts and earworm-laden vocal melodies. It also proves that great guitar pop can still evoke favorites from a glorious past – the penetrating moodiness of XTC’s Black Sea, or R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction, comes to mind – while refusing to waste time on idle nostalgia. Whether it’s ‘Swinging in the Circus’ with its poignant musings on both stage fright and feeling like you don’t measure up, or the breezy Drums and Wires anthemic pop of ‘They Said So’, A Colossal Waste of Light speaks of and to the present, a time when light and dark can’t help but feel firmly intertwined.