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Artist: BRIGHT EYES |
At Cheezeball.net our opinions on Bright Eyes are decidedly mixed, and, thus, it’s taken us a while to come to terms with Cassadaga. Perhaps nothing articulates our ambivalence about the band quite so well as the simultaneous release in 2005 of I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. While Wide Awake is a promising collection of indie-rock tunes (helped along nicely, we might add, by Emmylou Harris on three tracks), Digital Ash is a lamentable hodgepodge of electronic detritus. Just because you record something, doesn’t mean you have to release it.
(Feel free to insert snide comparison to Ryan Adams here.)
But the consensus in these parts is that Conor Oberst can write. In fact, when stacked against his peers, Mr. Oberst, with his counter-intuitive intellect and wide array of cultural allusions, comes off looking like a veritable wordsmith. It’s his musical choices that we occasionally question. And even then, we will begrudgingly admit, the lyrics can sometimes save the track.
The first song on Cassadaga is a case in point. “Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)”—much like the first track on Wide Awake—showcases both Oberst’s precocity and his penchant for self-indulgence. Once you cut through the hokey radio talk-show psychic babble and the cacophonous swelling of overdubbed synthesizers and distortion—(and are those horns we hear?)—the writing shines:
| Corporate or colonial The movement is unstoppable Like the body of a centerfold it spreads To the counter-culture copyright Get your revolution at a lower price |
While lyrics like these make it possible to get through most musical missteps, nothing can recuperate "Make a Plan to Love Me." It is, hands down, the worst track on Cassadaga. In fact, it may just be the worst track we've heard all year. Even Oberst’s writing can’t bail out this ballad:
| Do what you feel Whatever is cool But I just have to ask . . . Will you make a plan to love me sometime soon? |
Huh? This from the guy who wrote “When the President Talks To God”? The cloying melody and crescendo of bleating background vocals are bad enough, but Oberst even forgets to bring his pen to work here. Absolute drivel. Cutting back on the organs, trumpets, and accordions would have improved Cassadaga in general, but nothing--save cutting it entirely--could have saved “Make a Time to Love Me."
Someone around here recently commented that Bright Eyes are to the 00s what Poi Dog Pondering was to the late 80s and early 90s. (With apologies to Poi Dog who are, apparently, still around.) Which raises the question: will Bright Eyes remain a band with some cultural capital or spin right off the planet in a haze of electronic house music?
In Summation: Some decent stuff here, including the stellar "Four Winds," but Oberst and company get two-and-a-half cheezeballs for musical malfeasance and the misadventure that is “Make a Plan to Love Me.”
kw
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A NOTE ON THE RATING SYSTEM:
5 CHEEZEBALLS = UNLISTENABLE SCHLOCK
3 CHEEZEBALLS = A DIFFICULT SLOG
1 CHEEZEBALL = THE ODD FORGIVABLE MISSTEP
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