Eels is the second studio album by American rock band Being Dead. It was released on September 27, 2024, through Bayonet Records. Arriving over a year after their debut studio album When Horses Would Run, the album was met with universal acclaim from critics.
The trio, consisting of Falcon Keller, Cody Dosier and Nicole Roman-Johnston, was formed in Austin, Texas and released their studio debut on July 14, 2023, entitled When Horses Would Run. Their follow-up record Eels was produced by John Congleton, who previously worked with the likes of St. Vincent, Mannequin Pussy and Explosions in the Sky. On the album, Being Dead explores themes, including "anxiety about self-worth", days wasted and the void after a "fleeting relief of hedonistic release".
Eels received a score of 89 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on four critics' reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Daniel Felsenthal of Pitchfork awarded the album the accolade "Best New Music", saying that albeit their music seems "bare-bones", it includes a variety of "unexpected" instruments, such as "Mellotron, banjo, Casio drums". Felsenthal thought a recurring theme throughout the record was "motion" as it is "constantly changing" and "speeding along". They concluded that the trio remakes "the future in the image of the past".
Handing out the same score in a review for Paste, Ben Salmon praised not only their ability of "writing great songs" but to push their music into "interesting, unexpected places". Salmon calls Eels a compilation of "sharp zig-zags and even sharper hooks" and drew comparisons to artists such as Neutral Milk Hotel, Animal Collective, That Dog. and the Beach Boys. Lloyd Bolton at The Line of Best Fit called Eels "good chaos" with an overflow of "ideas" that alternate between "short-form experiments" and "more developed songs" that keeps piquing the listener's interest.