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Bright Eyes lost on twang binge
By Taylor Sullivan
tsulli51@mscd.edu

Photo courtesy by Press Here Publicity Conor Oberst’s eyes must have been shut during the recording of Bright Eyes’ new album, Casadaga. Oberst will be in Denver April 28, doling out the melancholia at the Buell Theater.

If only Conor Oberst was still 18. If only I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning hadn’t convinced everyone that Nebraska was more than just a place to forget. If only 30 million 14-year-olds in Chuck Taylors and eyeliner hadn’t built a shrine to Bright Eyes and slit their wrists in honor. Then maybe Casadaga would be better than its clever, time-consuming packaging; then maybe Oberst, the drunk and dreary frontman, could live up to his previously set standards.

With Bright Eyes’ 2004 double release of I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, Oberst asked “What do you guys want to hear? Rehashed country hymnals, or progressive, digital compositions?” And as though the comparisons of Oberst to Bob Dylan weren’t ubiquitous enough, the whine generation reacted in much the same way as the beats did when Dylan picked up a Fender at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Digital Ash was regrettably burned as electric blasphemy, forgotten as an unfortunate accident, and the twang prevailed.

So follows Casadaga – and the fans got what they asked for.

Oberst was born with the devil in him, one he would sometimes fight but most times indulge. His legacy was bred from the open-wound rawness that this devil brought to his lyrics. The soul-driving demon saturated his earliest works and reared its whiskey-soaked head as both Lifted and Fevers and Mirrors. The truth he injected into songs was supplemented by the jagged-edged composition and second-rate recording. It was through his willingness to be imperfect that he connected with his audience. They weren’t perfect either, and they had the anti-depressionants to prove it.

The angst, the anger, the soul started dissipating on Wide Awake, with some saying Oberst was just growing up, he was maturing as a person and a musician. But maybe it was the confused adolescent ego that made his earlier work so remarkable.

Casadaga casts aside his previous notion of beautiful mistakes, carrying an air of perfection that buries the album under a slick coat of composition and chokes any truth from Oberst. Listen after listen reveals the undeniable truth that Casadaga’s soul is dead, like Charlie Daniels and his fiddle drove that devil right out of Oberst.

You can still hear the strength behind Oberst’s lyrics and core song writing, but 20-bar fiddle solos like the one on “Four Winds,” destroy his message. In fact, there are more out-of-place instruments on this album than there are assholes in Texas. A mere 35 people contributed to the album, and God knows it wouldn’t have been right without that bass oboe. Calculations are still out, but there might be more slide guitar on Casadaga than the entire Dixie Chicks’ catalogue.

And beyond the overproduction, the whole thing plays like a cover album. Every song vaguely sounds like you’ve heard it before, but can’t place. “Soul Singer in a Session Band” is an obvious attempt by Oberst to fill Dylan’s crystal slippers, “Middleman” sounds like it came right off the Deadwood soundtrack, and Death Cab For Cutie did “Cleanse Song” much better as “I Will Follow You Into The Dark.”

It’s not that Casadaga is a total waste. It absolutely has its strong points, including an epic introduction that mixes their strengths, from building and crashing composition to their trademarked sampling of creepy old voice recordings.

Hopefully Bright Eyes will expose these strengths Saturday, April 28, at the Buell Theatre; if only Oberst would realize the potential he holds in his words alone, put the fiddle down and pick up that old four-track recorder.