BRIGHT EYES
I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
Saddle Creek
BRIGHT EYES
Digital Ash In a Digital Urn
Saddle Creek
· Conor Oberst is a two-faced sonofabitch genius bastard and I hate him for it.
My friend Malcolm and I have a plan. We propose to track down the aggravatingly talented of this world and chop one hand off each of them in hopes of levelling the playing field. Near the top of our list is the frustratingly young and brilliant Conor Oberst.
Starting as a head of a label at the age of 14, he is responsible for the consistently impressive Bright Eyes discography since then, is bedfellow to Winona Ryder (making Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner look about 80) and now chums around with Emmylou Harris – it's just not fair.
So, it's tempting to say that Bright Eyes's Guns N’ Roses-style two-albums-on-the-same-day routine falls flat on its face, but that would be a lie. Already responsible for one of my favourite rainy-day records (2002's Lifted or The Story's In The Soil Keep Your Ear To The Ground), our wee little mister has now gone and done it again – at least in one case, that is.
Bad news first: separated along stylistic lines, these two new Bright Eyes records attempt to create a paradox of extremes, one based in country singer-songwriter stylings (at which Oberst has always excelled), the other a grab at electro-touched rock (at which Oberst isn't quite so good). Where one sounds natural and golden, the other sounds forced and sodden. Like owning two cars, a dog and a cat, or two closets of clothing (work clothes in one, civvies in the other), you're always going to pick favourites – in this case there's really no contest.
I'm Wide Awake It's Morning is a truly grand record. From the surprise No. 1 single "Lua" (a simplistic gem flown by just a quietly muttering Oberst and his acoustic guitar) to its close cousin "First Day of My Life" (one of the finest love songs he has ever written), right through its trio of Emmylou Harris duets, Oberst strikes nary a stray chord. In reflection, perhaps we should take both of his hands away.
But then there's also Digital Ash In a Digital Urn, a cold and uncompromising exercise in artist versatility that's mostly just padding when compared to its twin. Drums stutter and skitter, guitars buzz around and Oberst yells over top it all. Despite the neat tricks, Digital Ash fails – there isn't as much emotion in this entire record's entire body (despite the sampled screams on "Easy/Lucky/Free") as there is in just one minute of Morning’s gorgeous centrepiece "Landlocked Blues" (the Harris-assisted rewrite of an earlier Bright Eyes peak, "One Foot In Front Of The Other").
Granted, that's all comparative and few others could even try to pull this off, so props are due no matter how little I want to feed into Oberst's ego. Had he only one hand, however, the dude would be an underdog. (See how it all comes together? Join the crusade! Do it for love!)
Comparison wise, think of Morning as Elvis and Digital Ash as the King's stillborn twin. While talent sometimes spreads throughout a family, usually one member gets it more than the other – and some just don't really do much of anything.
MORNING 4/5
DIGITAL ASH 2/5
MARK HAMILTON
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