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View attachment 12182
rate 4/5
It doesn’t take a soothsayer to predict that in April 2007, American alt-rock fans will learn en masse that the new Bright Eyes album is named after a spiritualist community in Florida – 100 adult residents including 40 certified mediums, says Google. How much alt-rock needs to know this is another question, as is whether alt-rock needs the voice-over auntie whose nattering about psychic this-and-that vies with the discordant orchestration for too much of Cassadaga's six-minute opening track.
But these twin annoyances prove an acceptable way for Conor Oberst to get the bullshit out of his system. Certainly they're more efficient than the way he yoked the tuneful I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning to the noisy Digital Ash in a Digital Urn in 2005. Here, once the nattering is gone, it's gone for good. The remaining dozen tracks realize the promise manifest since Oberst's sprawling 2002 – let's remember all fourteen words of its title for flavor – Lifted, or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground. Musically, Cassadaga is fully formed, a considered synthesis of the catch-as-catch-can expansiveness of Oberst's Lifted-era bands with the country tendencies that have always undergirded his Middle American vocals. Longtime enabler Mike Mogis is everywhere, playing ten instruments all told. Nate Walcott mans multiple keyboards and arranges strings and woodwinds, which get pretty baroque on "Cleanse Song." The last track features just Oberst on guitar and synthesizer with some femme backup. There are more voice-overs, but nonetheless there's a stylistic spine here. Oberst's prog and jam-band tendencies are both subsumed by a sensibility that's Americana in a winning, all-embracing sense. Americanapolitan, let's call it.
As Oberst well knows, those with the gift of melody are allowed to tell us anything that's on their minds, and he hasn't stopped exploiting the privilege. The first song establishes a crisis – nattering aside, "Future markets, holy wars/Been tried 10,000 times before" (and plenty else) addresses something real. The second song suggests a quest – to Cassadaga, among many other named places. But as usual, not every track justifies the buildup. A rehab saga lurks hereabouts, sometimes out front ("Cleanse Song"), sometimes done up as an existential desolation saga ("If the Brakeman Turns My Way"). "Soul Singer in a Session Band" explores midcareer artistic confusion like thousands of songs before it. Waxing metaphysical with "a postmodern author who didn't exist," Oberst concludes that he's just like that soul singer: "I was a hopeless romantic/Now I'm just turning tricks." Give Oberst credit for freshening up a familiar theme – but not for linking it to any crisis-and-quest.
Similarly, the album is loaded with love songs, and some of these are just love songs – but remarkable love songs. You don't have to be an E! addict to assume that "Classic Cars" kisses off indie vamp Winona Ryder, but that inside dope is a distraction – this is as fine a reflection on the love of an older woman as Rod Stewart's "Maggie May," one whose details add a vividness that has nothing to do with anyone's biography. "Make a Plan to Love Me" would seem to address a particular career woman, and maybe some gossipmonger will tell us who. But again it doesn't matter – literally millions of young men and women are embroiled in such contradictions, and with the help of four professional backup girls cooing the title hook, maybe Oberst will inspire a few resolutions.
The gossip in us will wonder whether the unadorned finale addresses the same career woman, who has pretty clearly just aborted a fetus Oberst helped conceive. But give Oberst credit for connecting it back to the universal concerns he claims. Coming after "No One Would Riot for Less," a grimly courageous example of a love-at- the-end-of-the-world subgenre we all wish didn't exist, and "I Must Belong Somewhere," resigned in a chin-up way to a world whose imperfections could prove fatal, its conclusion seems pretty conclusive: "I took off my shoes and walked into the woods/I felt lost and found with every step I took." In Cassadaga, Oberst hoped to commune with the dead. On Cassadaga, he shows he can still tell us something by communing with himself.
by ROBERT CHRISTGAU(rollingstone)
From Amazon.com:
Editorial review:
On their sixth and most straightforwardly clean album, Nebraska's Bright Eyes once again integrate a revolving cast of players to the mix, including Portland tunesmith M. Ward and alt-country queen Gillian Welch. But the band remains at the helm of forever-wunderkind Conor Oberst, and the fruitful songwriter has one-upped 2005's I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning with a proficient and accessible ensemble of expansive pop orchestrations and ornate folk songs that chronicle his traverses across the American panorama. Oberst's voice quakes and wanders through South Dakota lore and Sunshine State chicanery, always the perfect vehicle for his threadbare lyrics. "Take the fruit from the tree/Break the skin with your teeth/Is it bitter or sweet/All depends on your timing," he forewarns in "Cleanse Song," a psychedelic merry-go-round of a soundtrack that joins the Scottish-tinged "Soul Singer in a Session Band" and singalong single "Four Winds" as Cassadaga's finest. The 13-song-record is certain to open more doors for a band whose recognition has soared with every release since Oberst was just 14. --Scott Holter
Product Description
Once tagged "rock's boy genius" by the music press, Conor Oberst turns 27 on February 15th and even without that in mind it's hard to listen to Cassadaga without hearing a newfound sophistication to the Bright Eyes sound. Producer, multi-instrumentalist and permanent band member Mike Mogis has crafted a swirling, euphonious record, at times bursting with bombastic confidence and country swagger, and at others loose-limbed and mesmeric. Trumpet and piano player Nate Walcott, a Bright Eyes player since 2003 and now the third permanent member, is responsible for the cinematic string arrangements. Other than a handful of live appearances and the release of a collection of B-sides & rarities, Bright Eyes kept mostly out of sight in 2006 after the busy 2005 which saw the simultaneous release of the sister albums Digital Ash In A Digital Urn and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. Should you have looked for them you'd have found them tucked away in various studios around the country. Recording for the first time outside of the Lincoln, NE studio belonging to Mogis, the Bright Eyes cast of players were busy in studios in Portland, OR, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. The result is the band's most confident work so far, an album so full of soaring strings and female harmonies that it feels almost buoyant in comparison to previous releases. While many latched onto the smattering of political commentary in 2005's I'm Wide Awake..., Cassadaga is less blunt in its depiction of youthful exasperation in the Bush era. References to Hurricane Katrina, holy wars and polar ice-caps may crop up, but they're buried deep amongst the ruminations on life, love, history, death and the afterlife. If I'm Wide Awake... was "the New York City album", then Cassadaga is "the America album", in which Oberst diaries his travels around the country and articulates his sense of history in the landscape. In first single "Four Winds" he is "off to old Dakota where genocide sleeps/in the Black Hills, the Badlands, the calloused East/I buried my ballast, I made my peace." Cassadaga itself crops up in the same song. The town, a community for psychics in central Florida, is visited in order to "commune with the dead". This wandering spirit is crystalized in "I Must Belong Somewhere" a song which was already a staple of live shows by the end of the 2005. "Hot Knives" is particularly spirited, bringing to mind the true energy of a Bright Eyes show. Likewise, "Soul Singer In A Session Band" - a rousing paean to an oxymoronic profession - enlists all of the elements which make the Bright Eyes live band such a euphoric experience. "Make A Plan To Plan To Love Me" is Bright Eyes at their most playful; a straight-up love song, replete with girl group vocals and Burt Bacharach strings. Oberst, the fumbling guitarist whose impassioned prose tumbles out under stark stage spotlights, is still recognizable in every track, but the songs are rich with elaborate production, cinema-sized orchestration and, at times, sprawling, almost psychedelic, atmospherics. The line up of Bright Eyes players includes Andy Lemaster (Now It's Overhead), Ben Kweller, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Janet Weiss (ex-Sleater Kinney), Jason Boesel (Rilo Kiley), John McEntire (Tortoise) M.Ward, Maria Taylor and Rachael Yamagata.
Track listing:
1. Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)
2. Four Winds
3. If The Brakeman Turns My Way
4. Hot Knives
5. Make A Plan To Love Me
6. Soul Singer In A Session Band
7. Classic Cars
8. Middleman
9. Cleanse Song
10. No One Would Riot For Less
11. Coat Check Dream Song
12. I Must Belong Somewhere
13. Lime Tree
rate 4/5
It doesn’t take a soothsayer to predict that in April 2007, American alt-rock fans will learn en masse that the new Bright Eyes album is named after a spiritualist community in Florida – 100 adult residents including 40 certified mediums, says Google. How much alt-rock needs to know this is another question, as is whether alt-rock needs the voice-over auntie whose nattering about psychic this-and-that vies with the discordant orchestration for too much of Cassadaga's six-minute opening track.
But these twin annoyances prove an acceptable way for Conor Oberst to get the bullshit out of his system. Certainly they're more efficient than the way he yoked the tuneful I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning to the noisy Digital Ash in a Digital Urn in 2005. Here, once the nattering is gone, it's gone for good. The remaining dozen tracks realize the promise manifest since Oberst's sprawling 2002 – let's remember all fourteen words of its title for flavor – Lifted, or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground. Musically, Cassadaga is fully formed, a considered synthesis of the catch-as-catch-can expansiveness of Oberst's Lifted-era bands with the country tendencies that have always undergirded his Middle American vocals. Longtime enabler Mike Mogis is everywhere, playing ten instruments all told. Nate Walcott mans multiple keyboards and arranges strings and woodwinds, which get pretty baroque on "Cleanse Song." The last track features just Oberst on guitar and synthesizer with some femme backup. There are more voice-overs, but nonetheless there's a stylistic spine here. Oberst's prog and jam-band tendencies are both subsumed by a sensibility that's Americana in a winning, all-embracing sense. Americanapolitan, let's call it.
As Oberst well knows, those with the gift of melody are allowed to tell us anything that's on their minds, and he hasn't stopped exploiting the privilege. The first song establishes a crisis – nattering aside, "Future markets, holy wars/Been tried 10,000 times before" (and plenty else) addresses something real. The second song suggests a quest – to Cassadaga, among many other named places. But as usual, not every track justifies the buildup. A rehab saga lurks hereabouts, sometimes out front ("Cleanse Song"), sometimes done up as an existential desolation saga ("If the Brakeman Turns My Way"). "Soul Singer in a Session Band" explores midcareer artistic confusion like thousands of songs before it. Waxing metaphysical with "a postmodern author who didn't exist," Oberst concludes that he's just like that soul singer: "I was a hopeless romantic/Now I'm just turning tricks." Give Oberst credit for freshening up a familiar theme – but not for linking it to any crisis-and-quest.
Similarly, the album is loaded with love songs, and some of these are just love songs – but remarkable love songs. You don't have to be an E! addict to assume that "Classic Cars" kisses off indie vamp Winona Ryder, but that inside dope is a distraction – this is as fine a reflection on the love of an older woman as Rod Stewart's "Maggie May," one whose details add a vividness that has nothing to do with anyone's biography. "Make a Plan to Love Me" would seem to address a particular career woman, and maybe some gossipmonger will tell us who. But again it doesn't matter – literally millions of young men and women are embroiled in such contradictions, and with the help of four professional backup girls cooing the title hook, maybe Oberst will inspire a few resolutions.
The gossip in us will wonder whether the unadorned finale addresses the same career woman, who has pretty clearly just aborted a fetus Oberst helped conceive. But give Oberst credit for connecting it back to the universal concerns he claims. Coming after "No One Would Riot for Less," a grimly courageous example of a love-at- the-end-of-the-world subgenre we all wish didn't exist, and "I Must Belong Somewhere," resigned in a chin-up way to a world whose imperfections could prove fatal, its conclusion seems pretty conclusive: "I took off my shoes and walked into the woods/I felt lost and found with every step I took." In Cassadaga, Oberst hoped to commune with the dead. On Cassadaga, he shows he can still tell us something by communing with himself.
by ROBERT CHRISTGAU(rollingstone)
From Amazon.com:
Editorial review:
On their sixth and most straightforwardly clean album, Nebraska's Bright Eyes once again integrate a revolving cast of players to the mix, including Portland tunesmith M. Ward and alt-country queen Gillian Welch. But the band remains at the helm of forever-wunderkind Conor Oberst, and the fruitful songwriter has one-upped 2005's I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning with a proficient and accessible ensemble of expansive pop orchestrations and ornate folk songs that chronicle his traverses across the American panorama. Oberst's voice quakes and wanders through South Dakota lore and Sunshine State chicanery, always the perfect vehicle for his threadbare lyrics. "Take the fruit from the tree/Break the skin with your teeth/Is it bitter or sweet/All depends on your timing," he forewarns in "Cleanse Song," a psychedelic merry-go-round of a soundtrack that joins the Scottish-tinged "Soul Singer in a Session Band" and singalong single "Four Winds" as Cassadaga's finest. The 13-song-record is certain to open more doors for a band whose recognition has soared with every release since Oberst was just 14. --Scott Holter
Product Description
Once tagged "rock's boy genius" by the music press, Conor Oberst turns 27 on February 15th and even without that in mind it's hard to listen to Cassadaga without hearing a newfound sophistication to the Bright Eyes sound. Producer, multi-instrumentalist and permanent band member Mike Mogis has crafted a swirling, euphonious record, at times bursting with bombastic confidence and country swagger, and at others loose-limbed and mesmeric. Trumpet and piano player Nate Walcott, a Bright Eyes player since 2003 and now the third permanent member, is responsible for the cinematic string arrangements. Other than a handful of live appearances and the release of a collection of B-sides & rarities, Bright Eyes kept mostly out of sight in 2006 after the busy 2005 which saw the simultaneous release of the sister albums Digital Ash In A Digital Urn and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. Should you have looked for them you'd have found them tucked away in various studios around the country. Recording for the first time outside of the Lincoln, NE studio belonging to Mogis, the Bright Eyes cast of players were busy in studios in Portland, OR, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. The result is the band's most confident work so far, an album so full of soaring strings and female harmonies that it feels almost buoyant in comparison to previous releases. While many latched onto the smattering of political commentary in 2005's I'm Wide Awake..., Cassadaga is less blunt in its depiction of youthful exasperation in the Bush era. References to Hurricane Katrina, holy wars and polar ice-caps may crop up, but they're buried deep amongst the ruminations on life, love, history, death and the afterlife. If I'm Wide Awake... was "the New York City album", then Cassadaga is "the America album", in which Oberst diaries his travels around the country and articulates his sense of history in the landscape. In first single "Four Winds" he is "off to old Dakota where genocide sleeps/in the Black Hills, the Badlands, the calloused East/I buried my ballast, I made my peace." Cassadaga itself crops up in the same song. The town, a community for psychics in central Florida, is visited in order to "commune with the dead". This wandering spirit is crystalized in "I Must Belong Somewhere" a song which was already a staple of live shows by the end of the 2005. "Hot Knives" is particularly spirited, bringing to mind the true energy of a Bright Eyes show. Likewise, "Soul Singer In A Session Band" - a rousing paean to an oxymoronic profession - enlists all of the elements which make the Bright Eyes live band such a euphoric experience. "Make A Plan To Plan To Love Me" is Bright Eyes at their most playful; a straight-up love song, replete with girl group vocals and Burt Bacharach strings. Oberst, the fumbling guitarist whose impassioned prose tumbles out under stark stage spotlights, is still recognizable in every track, but the songs are rich with elaborate production, cinema-sized orchestration and, at times, sprawling, almost psychedelic, atmospherics. The line up of Bright Eyes players includes Andy Lemaster (Now It's Overhead), Ben Kweller, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Janet Weiss (ex-Sleater Kinney), Jason Boesel (Rilo Kiley), John McEntire (Tortoise) M.Ward, Maria Taylor and Rachael Yamagata.
Track listing:
1. Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)
2. Four Winds
3. If The Brakeman Turns My Way
4. Hot Knives
5. Make A Plan To Love Me
6. Soul Singer In A Session Band
7. Classic Cars
8. Middleman
9. Cleanse Song
10. No One Would Riot For Less
11. Coat Check Dream Song
12. I Must Belong Somewhere
13. Lime Tree