Ever hear an instrumental passage that speaks more than a composition notebook’s worth of good lyrics? On Eels’ 2005 album Blinking Lights And Other Revelations, several moments like these are sprinkled over the course of two discs. The tracks swim in an autumnal sadness, and, when placed among the lyrical observations of one-man show Mark Oliver Everett, they turn a great record into a transcendent one. While only one of these instrumentals makes it onto Eels With Strings: Live at Town Hall, their unforgettable arrangements inspire the whole show (recorded on June 30, 2005, at Town Hall in New York City).

Throughout the 1990s Richard Baluyut created music that was at once unsettling and arrestingly beautiful with his band Versus. His lyrics were often as poetic as they were direct, and while his appreciation of the cathartic possibilities in incorporating noise, both artistically and aggressively, surfaced in Versus’ music, he never allowed it to overpower his acute sense of melodic priorities and pop song structure, derived as much from the Kinks as from the Pixies. Baluyut’s command of dramatic shifts in volume and tempo gave his work in Versus a unique tension and nuance that many fans found unforgettable. The same tendencies and talents are obvious in his writing for Whysall Lane, a moniker under which he has been recording and performing for several years now.