Special dual album review of Bright Eyes “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” and “Digital Ash In a Digital Urn”
PART ONE
One of the things I enjoy most about fiction - in writing or movies and television - is the opportunity to witness a moment of revelation in which a character is somehow changed. We are able to see in the course of just a few sentences, lines or gestures how someone comes to grasp the fact that his or her life is now different than it was five pages / minutes ago.
The simultaneous release of two new albums “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” and “Digital Ash In a Digital Urn” may be such a moment in the ongoing story of Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes).
My own brief work of fiction on the subject goes something like this: Conor was born in semi-rural Nebraska in 1981, the only child of a successful merchant and a grade school music teacher, both very thin, both devoutly Christian. By adolescence he rebelled against his parents’ zealous beliefs and constant spoiling by adopting a goth-lite wardrobe and buying several Nitzer Ebb albums. Maybe Conor reluctantly continued attending church with his parents so he could sing in the choir. Maybe not.
By early teens his inherited musical talent became apparent and, with the benefit of seven years of forced piano lessons at home and now weekly guitar lessons at the mall’s music store, he gained confidence as a musician. His outward appearance and lack of interest in football isolated him from his classmates. At some point he embraced the idea that other people may or may not think he is gay. In high school everyone considered him thoroughly weird except his sophomore English Teacher, Mrs. Schibley. She took an interest in his sprawling observational poetry and he in turn took an interest in Steinbeck, Kerouac, and Thoreau. She was of the generation that referred to John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell as “the modern poets,” so Conor added them to his CD collection.
At age 16 he inserted himself into a coffee shop open mic night where he sang his poems while breaking guitar strings and trying desperately to implode eyes first. Earlier in the week he had invited Mrs. Schibley to attend the performance and she did. She was stunned by his intensity and flare for the dramatic. “I had no idea you were into politics,” she said in praise of his lyrics. “I’m not. I’m into change,” he answered.
He was invited back to play a regular set. Through the coffee shop he developed as a performer, met girls who would talk to him, and read day old copies of the New York Times. One evening a sound engineer caught his show and offered him free studio sessions between 2 and 5 AM on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. A demo was made and shopped around. A song was played on college radio. Shortly after high school graduation, Bright Eyes was born of necessity – Conor needed a backing band. Deals were inked and the words “wunderkind” and “boy genius” tossed about. Surely great things awaited. *
Fast-forward through four albums, rotating band members and an election-eve tour through the yellow states with REM and Springsteen to present day and the release of “Wide Awake” and “Digital Ash.” Conor, now 24, has come into his own. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes beautifully, we have heard him grow from sputtering, precocious boy to soulfully earnest man. How do we know? Because in any good story there is a moment – a scene, a look, a sound – that lets us know our hero has undergone a change and, more importantly, that he knows it. These two albums, taken together, are the sound of Conor Oberst coming of age.
Whether you're telling a story in 220 pages or 65 minutes change must happen quickly. The impact of events which take place over oceans of time are condensed into a single moment and characters are given the benefit of clarity, understanding, and perspective to make that moment resonate as it happens. These kinds of things tend to be few and far between for the rest of us, and even more difficult to capture. Even during our most memorable experiences - as we say ‘I do,’ feel the wheels skid out from under us at 70 miles per hour, or hold our children for the very first time - we may not always feel the full weight of the changes happening within us. We spend years sorting out the importance of our experiences as their memories stack one on top of the other. I've heard the threat of immanent death can clarify all this and provide that very fiction-like flash in which one can see his entire life and sum it up as one thing, one need, one change to be made. Maybe that’s why people ride bulls.
This is how "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" begins. Not on a bull but with the clarity and urgency of a fast approaching end. "At The Bottom of Everything," the album's opening track, is a plane crash over water painted as one grand and beautiful moment of truth. Realizing their fate, the pilot issues a litany of demands to his doomed passengers including starring into the faces of death-row criminals, setting fire to sulfur and brimstone preachers (yikes!) and memorizing "nine numbers" by which he must mean your social security numbers since few people's PIN numbers are longer than four digits and phone numbers (with area codes) are ten.
Of these conjoined albums “Wide Awake” is the "folk" or "country" one. There are some dead giveaways like the acoustic and steel guitars, mandolins and the chugging railroad rhythm of “Another Travelin’ Song.” The real proof is in the lovely and familiar voice of Emmylou Harris who lends her flawless Americana credentials to a number of tracks. The sound, at times rocking but mostly stripped to acoustics, seems to have a sense of consistent identity – everything fits well together and has a purpose within each song, and the songs fit within the album. Oberst’s voice is quaking but resolved and well matched to his emotionally charged lyrics, still achingly well wrought.
“… I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss;
So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it;
But me I'm not a gamble, you can count on me to split;
The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist” from “Lua.”
His greatest success, though, may be in the music itself. He has managed to write a few instantly familiar, charming and hum-able tunes, the kind you think you already know a few bars in even though you’ve never heard it before. “At The Bottom of Everything,” once it finally gets going, plus “We Are Nowhere And It’s Now” and “Lua” boast simple melodies that sound like they’ve been around forever. Equal parts Christmas carol and Irish drinking song, they are inspired, woozy and hard to forget once you’ve heard them once or twice. The comforting familiarity of Dylan's “Blowin’ in the Wind” or Bob Marley's “Redemption Song” may come with time or be rooted in a rhythm fundamental to our cultural experience and therefore become immediately accessible. In these songs Oberst is earning the favorable comparisons heaped upon him and shedding some skeptical barbs.
Sealing the deal and offering further evidence of his newfound maturity is the album’s eighth track, the moving “Landlocked Blues.” This was first released as “One Foot In Front of the Other” on the 2003 “Saddle Creek 50” sampler. It is a slowly waltzing war protest / love song in which he essentially asks everyone to just take a step back and think. Preaching and judgment are suspended, as are stylish emotive flourishes in order to let the song naturally unfold. His treatment of the overt political content shows a man planting his flag rather than waving it madly or burning someone else’s down.
The decision to record two albums so seemingly separate while marrying them to one another with the timing of their release shows real ambition but also confidence in the material. The predictably crowed-over dual release focused a brighter light on Oberst and his songs, creating that slow-motion moment in which we see our hero change. With “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” Bright Eyes delivers an affirming revelation.
* Except for the part about him being from Nebraska I made all of that up.
To continue reading this feature including a review of Bright Eyes "Digital Ash In A Digital Urn" please visit
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