| |
|
Music Archives:
Most Recent
| Highest
Rated | Alphabetical
| Highest Rated 2006
Bright Eyes, Big
City
 |
|
Bright Eyes: I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Saddle Creek, 2005
Rating: 3.8
|
|
 |
|
Bright Eyes: Digital Ash in a Digital Urn
Saddle Creek, 2005
Rating: 3.3
|
|
Posted:
January 24,
2005
By
Laurence Station
Conor Oberst has crafted not one but two albums relating his experiences
upon moving to New York City. Clearly, the Nebraska-born singer-songwriter
wanted to capture the scary, exhilarating, depressing and often bewildering
sense of big-city life -- and, being the ambitious type, decided to record
two CDs' worth of material exploring the transition.
The stronger of the pair, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, is Oberst's
stripped down, urban-cowboy slant on the Big Apple; the second, Digital
Ash in a Digital Urn, is less obvious, over-produced and (regrettably)
heavily dependent on synth-powered '80s grooves. Oberst's skill as a
songwriter has improved since
his last effort, and, at least on I'm Wide Awake, the not-yet
25-year-old displays a mastery of material, a reigning in of indulgences
that promises stronger work to come. Digital Ash doesn't entirely
undo all the good of I'm Wide Awake, but it proves that Oberst is
still going through artistic growing pains, attempting to define an musical
identity that encompasses his myriad interests without coming across as too
scattershot or unfocused.
I'm Wide Awake skillfully captures the intense isolation felt by a
newcomer to a bustling metropolis -- total disconnection from friends and
familiar things. "Train Under Water" finds Oberst apologizing to an
acquaintance for missing a get-together because he always gets lost when he
leaves the Village. "Lua" is a depressing look at the shallow, drug-fueled
dating scene ("The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't
exist"). "We Are Nowhere And It's Now," a gloomy ballad with Emmylou Harris,
conveys an amorphous malaise, like being in an indefinable funk that keeps
you in bed all day with the covers pulled over your head.
"Landlocked Blues" is an overstated anti-war polemic that spouts the less
than inspiring line "If you're still free / Start running away." The
highpoint comes at the end with "Road To Joy," an energized kiss-off to the
depressive outlook, like beating back the dark clouds with a sonic
discharge. (The lone throwaway moment belongs to "First Day Of My Life," an
unmemorable, Beatle-esque ditty that seems out of place with the hangdog
mood permeating the rest of the album.) By the time I'm Wide Awake
comes to a close, Oberst gets a grip on his new surroundings, and ends his
musical odyssey on an appreciatively positive note.
Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, meanwhile, is lyrically obsessed with
time and death, and musically infatuated with bad music from the 1980s --
which adds up to an at times intriguing but not wholly satisfying album. The
jaded romanticism of "Take It Easy (Love Nothing)" isn't particularly fresh
(especially with its trundling percussion and surging choruses), but it at
least provides a pulse in comparison to the digital chill enveloping the
preceding tracks.
Digital Ash misses more than it hits. "Gold Mine Gutted" name-checks
acclaimed New York author Don DeLillo as Oberst announces his move to the
city, which he then equates with speed, anxiety and sleeplessness ("We hurry
to our deaths") over jittery beats and gauzy electronics. Worshipping at the
porcelain altar gets a high-gloss finish on the swinging "Hit The Switch,"
while "Devil In The Details" finds Oberst trying on a lounge singer's outfit
to no appreciable effect, and "Arc Of Time (Time Code)" imagines computers
unlocking the code to immortality -- for better or worse. Fittingly, the
closing, buoyed "Easy/Lucky/Free" ends with what sounds like the tape
melting, signifying the terminal end of the recording process.
The prolific Oberst has never been burdened with writer's block. If
anything, like
Ryan Adams, he's got too many ideas competing for his eager expression.
I'm Wide Awake proves that he has the chops and acumen to assemble a
consistently engaging collection of material. Digital Ash, however,
is its dark twin, revealing what happens when the singer and songwriter
overreaches his ambitions.
Site
design copyright © 2001-2011 Shaking Through.net. All original artwork,
photography and text used on this site is the sole copyright of the respective creator(s)/author(s). Reprinting, reposting, or citing any of the original
content appearing on this site without the written consent of Shaking
Through.net is strictly forbidden.
|
|
|
|
|
|
