1 post tagged “bright eyes”
6) “Cassadaga”, by Bright Eyes
To me, it seems that 2007 was a year for artist development. A lot of great artists formed new styles and new sounds that greatly affected the way their albums sounded, for better or for worse. Conor Oberst, who essentially is Bright Eyes, partook in this sound-shift with his new album “Cassadaga”, which combines Oberst’s personal and emotional style with…folk/country. Yes, for all of you who have not picked this album up yet, Conor has gone country, which is extremely odd, since in his last double-release (“Digital Ash in a Digital Urn” and “I’m Wide Awake, it’s Morning”, released in 2005), “I’m Wide Awake, it’s Morning”, the pseudo-country album, got extremely positive reviews. Conor, who has publicly shunned reviews and journalistic criticism in the past, appears to have embraced his popularity with “Cassadaga”, and for a long time, I couldn’t tell if it was a good or bad thing. When I picked up his “Four Winds EP” and heard what the new album was slated to sound like, I was appalled. Country is probably my least-favorite music genre ever (next to mainstream rap), and when I heard the twangs of ‘Four Winds’, I found it hard to believe that this album was Conor’s. But I held faith, and I iTunes’d the album on the day it came out, only to be disappointed again.
So then why is this album the 6th best of 2007? Well, let’s just say it grows on you. My intense hatred for the album gradually grew into an undying love of it and the message it gives. Conor still holds his personal “I’m-about-to-cry” singing style, and he talks about changes in your life. I’m not sure whether he’s satirizing religion or embracing it, which makes the album (which was named after a Spiritualist camp) that much better: the ambiguity means that it doesn’t feel like he’s forcing religion on you. But religion is not the main focus of the album, although it is certainly a recurring theme. Oberst sings largely about change and decision-making, both of which he has had to make a lot of since his recent breakthrough into the mainstream. The lyrics of ‘Middleman’ do this theme the most justice when he says, “So I have become the Middleman/the gray areas are fine/The "I don't know," the "maybe so"/is the only real reply.” Unlike Aesop Rock’s #8 album, Conor focuses on the changes the world is going through, which is prevalent in ‘Clairaudients (Kill or be Killed)’ and ‘Soul Singer in a Session Band’. Everything in the album comes full-circle though, as is in the penultimate track ‘I Must Belong Somewhere’. In this track, Oberst gives a six-and-a-half minute example of things in their place: “Leave novelist in his daydream tomb/Leave the scientist in her Rubik's cube/Let true genius in the padded room remain.” Then he concludes with a powerful resolution; “’Cause everything it must belong somewhere/they locked the devil in the basement, threw God up into the air/Yeah, everything must belong somewhere/You know it's true, I wish you'd leave me here.” You really have to listen to this album all the way through to get the full meaning of his songs, but even standing alone, the upbeat twangs seem to shine.
As I said, I’m a guy who doesn’t like country or any derivation thereof. The closest I can say that I get to country is Railroad Earth and this album, and even this album isn’t perfect. ‘Make a Plan to Love Me’ sounds like the pubescent Conor from five years ago, except worse. ‘Lime Tree’ is yet another disappointing closing song. And gosh darn it, the country sound just doesn’t work with lyrics like in ‘Hot Knives’. But the album does a lot for the genre, and it has certainly elevated my opinions of it. The instrumentation is typical Conor: heavy acoustic guitar, with smatterings of drums, organs, upright bass, and the occasional female vocalist, and although the sound has changed drastically, Conor is still the same, which he tries to prove in the hour that “Cassadaga” lasts. And you know what? It works, if you give it time, and if you do, you’ll probably grow to love this 6th best album of 2007 as much as I do.
Recommended Listening: “Four Winds”, “Soul Singer in a Session Band”, “Cleanse Song”, “I Must Belong Somewhere”.
