Bombs Away
by Eels

Album: Wonderful, Glorious (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the opening track of Eels' Wonderful, Glorious album, which has a bright orange cover with a plane dropping bombs. "I've had enough of being a mouse, I'm no longer keepin' my mouth shut, bombs away!" exclaims Mark Oliver Everett on this song. "It's the sound of a man who has been pushed around a little too long," he explained to The Sun. "Suppression leads to explosions."
  • Everett explained to NME that a lot of the album is "about fighting your way out of a situation." He added: "I did feel painted into a corner after doing the album trilogy thing in such a short amount of time. It was hard to know where to go afterwards. I think I was subconsciously dealing with that."
  • Eels plays a rainstick on this track. "We always had a rainstick in the studio as a joke," he told NME. "This big Brazilian amazon jungle type of thing. It's for jam bands and hippies. We're not a jam band and we're not hippies. So finally a night came when someone finally said 'let's use the rainstick!' and I said 'OK, let's try it.' And it ended up on the record."

    A rainstick is a long, hollow tube fashioned from the dried husk of a cactus, partially filled with small pebbles or beans. When the stick is upended, the pebbles fall to the other end of the tube, making a chattering sound reminiscent of rain falling. Its origins lie in Mesoamerican indigenous culture, and was played in the belief it could bring about rainstorms.

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