Duncan Fellows - Eyelids Shut EP

A couple of summers on from their sun-baked and spaced-out debut album, Both Sides Of The Ceiling, Austin’s Duncan Fellows return with a tight four-song EP titled Eyelids Shut.  With a few more years of touring and festival sets under their belts, what’s most apparent is how effortlessly the five-piece bob and weave from woozy meanderings to pounding out the notes.  Led by songwriters/guitarists Colin Harmon and Cullen Trevino, the two become almost interchangeable as verses and lead lines merge. 

The EP sandwiches two of the group’s livelier recordings to date with some hazier tunes more in line with their earlier work.  In spite of the tonal variance over Eyelids Shut’s too brief tenure, the band’s “all is not quite right” outlook on life remains firmly intact.  The ebb and flow of the opening ‘Deathwish Fish’ not only name-checks the Beatles but is interlaced with a ‘Lucy In The Sky’ psychedelic swirl of escapism of reality too stark to deal with.  The song leaves softer than it came and paves the way for the EP’s energetic core.

Harmon’s ‘Cursive Tattoo’ starts with a rhythmic pummeling courtesy of drummer Tim Hagen and bassist David Stimson and gives way to the title’s elliptical pull.  Shifting from keyboard fills from Jack Malonis to its pounding center Harmon bemoans the contrast of “you swore I was all you needed and more” to his girl’s suggestion of a reset.  Trevino’s fiercer sounding ‘Aliens’ reincarnates Dick Dale surf-guitar breakouts with roughshod vocals that shred in all the right places.  Resignation has never sounded so gloriously desperate. 

After the race through the middle, the appropriately titled title track takes the same dreamily sad glide path of some of Local Natives’ best songs.  Over its four-minute course the song completes a sneaky build as Hagen packs on the heft that carries it to the end.  The wordless harmonies hug around gently sung verses of life somehow inexplicably and uncontrollably passing by.  Musically at their peak to date, Eyelids Shut finds the band sharply focused through bleary eyes.