Special dual album review of Bright Eyes "I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning" and "Digital Ash In a Digital Urn"
PART TWO
"To the deepest part; Of the human heart; The fear of death expands;
Till we crack the code; We have always known; But could never understand;
On a circuit board; We will soon be born; Again, again, again, again…"
from "Arc of Time (Time Code)"
Bright Eyes Conor Oberst may not qualify as a truly polarizing figure in popular music but he certainly represents a ridge from which raining opinions might flow in opposite directions. Those opinions range from praising him as "rock’s boy genius" and liberal America’s new musical conscience to lamenting him as an overly hyped suburban mope-ster with a Bob Dylan fixation and a thesaurus. Forced to choose I must confess to falling loosely into the second group with feelings of hope for his clearly enormous potential. Conventional wisdom would lead one to think that the co-release of albums so stylistically opposed as "Digital Ash in a Digital Urn" (electronic) and "I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning" (folk) would further spread this gap, adding "versatile and ambitious" to his list of commendations while giving detractors reason to call the project "unfocused and over-reaching." However the poise and polish of these albums, and their surprising similarities, have me wondering not about Oberst’s merit as a prodigy but if the divide between troubadour and programmer is really so wide.
Traditionally folk music lends itself well to the solo performer. It is the genre responsible for elevating the American singer-songwriter to the status of Institution in popular music. All you really need is an instrument you can play while you sing and someone to keep the beat. Digital music, though perceived as being at the opposite end of the spectrum, is very much the same. It remains a primarily solo endeavor of tech-savvy musicians with a relatively small set of tools; percussion (live, machined, sampled or in combination) and an instrument you can play while you sing. That the instrument might be a computer filled with prerecorded loops and synthesized melodies seems irrelevant when the goal is the same – to make compelling music.
Even before George Beauchamp plugged in that first frying pan guitar the tools of popular music were engaged in a perpetual game of leapfrog with technology. Today’s electronic music, digitally driven and immensely marketable, can be an intimidating subject to explore. Examples range from the a-rhythmic clankery of live telephones falling apart into open pianos, dancehall beats beneath reedy violins, field recordings of the wind and everything in between. Just as digital technology has inserted itself into so many aspects of our lives digital music has found intersections across genres as artists reflect on the presence of emergent technologies in culture and embrace the virtual-zeitgeist. This is most apparent when electronics meets pop (digi-pop, pop-tronica, lap-pop…), where artists like Bjork and Radiohead have given the cutting edge an awe-inspiring sense of beauty, humanity, and social relevance.
The sound of technology at work has become so pervasive on and off the pop charts that many of the greatest musical moments of this decade (so far) are unimaginable without the computers on which they were partly performed – Radiohead "Kid A," Wilco "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," Flaming Lips "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" and The Postal Service "Give Up." Ironically these albums, to which "Digital Ash" owes a heap of artistic debt, also serve to point out how conventionally analog – and maybe just plain conventional – the album really is. Emphatic title and drum machines aside this is a pretty straightforward pop album playing under the influence of electronica.
The real influence felt is that of co-producer Jimmy Tamborello (The Postal Service / Dntel) who dials down his skittering heart beats and glitch-ridden samples to meet Oberst's voice, which seems naturally tuned to the crackle and whir of digital distortion. Tamborello leaves plenty of tell-tale code lying around the album, but beneath the fire wire and flat screens each song lives and dies by a classic melody and the unflinchingly personal poetry of Oberst’s writing. So Bright Eyes the experimenting electro-pop band and Bright Eyes the politically minded folk-rock band aren’t that different after all.
A quicker pace and buoyant techno-tribal rhythms do temper the album’s Nihilism 101 themes – the forced march of time, inevitability of death, insignificance of human drama on a cosmic scale, no God, no Hell, etc. Apparently Oberst was unable to heed the advice of his own "Down In a Rabbit Hole,"
"If your thoughts should turn to death; Got to stomp them out; Like a cigarette"
Then again why should dwelling on death be any harder to quit than smoking.
True gems "Gold Mine Gutted" and "Arc of Time (Time Code)" strike a balance of dark and light, the latter sparking a genuinely danceable rave-up midway through even as Oberst chants "you die, you die, you die, you die…" It’s a tough balancing act though, and other numbers leave stained images of twenty-somethings with big city problems out in the cold of spare, often somber arrangements that sound less than farm-fresh though not yet past their expiration date.
It’s nice to see Oberst out from behind his guitar fronting a band, albeit largely computerized. Maybe the heat of an unshielded spotlight can warm exposed nerve endings and sweat out more meaning. But in the stark light of day "Digital Ash" is an honest reflection of great things, including its influences, while "Wide Awake" may prove to be great and influential on its own.
An aside: "Light Pollution," the lone unvarnished rocker on “Digital Ash,” has Oberst doing his best Paul Westerberg while telling part of the story I was making up in PART ONE. Turns out my Mrs. Shibley was really a guy named Jonny Hobson who loaned Conor books and let him hang out in his basement listening to "…old folk songs about the government… He even got [Conor] a subscription; To the Socialist Review" Ahh yes, good times.
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