Bright Eyes
I’ve been reading that Conor Oberst is the second coming of Bob Dylan for over five years. We’ve bought three Bright Eyes discs in the past couple years; letting off the Happiness, Fevers and Mirrors, and Lifted …
And yet we’ve never got into Bright Eyes.
His earnest, emotional delivery was too harsh for my ears. Just when I was enjoying the music, he’d start talking or screaming, and it would ruin the experience for me.
And then there’s the fact that he just can’t stop writing and putting out music. There are so many songs and so many records. I always thought Conor needed an editor to package him better.
Well Conor’s finally put out a disc that we really like.
It’s called I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning.
It has Jesse Harris on guitar and Emilylou Harris on backing vocals and its consistently good from start to finish.
In typical Bright Eyes fashion, the record starts out with a shocking story about a plane crash, but it quickly gets going with a great folk song called At The Bottom of Everything.
The next song, called We Are Nowhere And It’s Now is the best song Conor Oberst has written to date.
The rest of the record is just as strong. So if you, like me, have been looking to join the Conor Oberst train, this is the record to do it with.
UPDATE: Ryan commented that he likes the song Lua better than the ones I mentioned. After a couple more listens, I think he may be right. It’s a great song. I also really like why Conor does with Ode to Joy (which he calls Road to Joy).