Rendezvous
07 July 06 : 11.11 PM
If Lifted or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, the critically-acclaimed album that catapulted Bright Eyes into the limelight from underground secrecy, is a baroque rock star with light shows throughout his concert, then I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning must be his mellow brother— less theatrical, less glamorous, but just as daring and attention-seeking. Released in Jan 2005, this brainchild of Conor Oberst (the only constant member in Bright Eyes) is a folk-tinged collection of acoustic confessionals, with Emmylou Harris and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James lending their vocals. Oberst’s signature quivering, cracking voice has been polished up (albeit only to a small extent) and he has toned down his poetic verbiage, but his sudden screams and tremulous vibrato still rings throughout the record. Together with the unembellished yet exultant orchestration, clumsy misplaying of notes, and his haunting imageries, he is able to articulate political awareness, nostalgia, loss, helplessness and hope.
The opening song featuring Jim James’ tenor vocals, however jubilant, tells of Oberst’s fatalistic outlook, as he states at the end of the song, right before the music cuts off, “I found out that I really am no one”. Oberst also has a pocket full of sad waltzes, such as “We Are Nowhere and It’s Now”, where Harris provides a soothing counterpart to Oberst’s unnerving vocals, and “Poison Oak”, both making use of the haunting, melodious mandolin. The latter song shows Leonard Cohen’s influence on the young wunderkind, in which Oberst recounts a past feeling where love and betrayal collide.
“Another Travellin’ Song”, as its name suggest, is one of the many travelling songs there are, and doesn’t boast to be any better, though it ought to. With a train beat remindful of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison days and the galloping energy of Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, this song conveys an alternative-country style, of the jangling spurs of cowboys and the restlessness of one feeling landlocked. Speaking of feeling landlocked, track 8, titled “Landlocked Blues”, is an exquisite song that ties in both a sense of triumph and helplessness. In this endearing duet with Harris, Oberst contemplates war, greed and hypocrisy as he looks at violence in children, indifference in a couple that makes love while the television reports news on an ongoing war, and at the same time, touching on more personal issues like conflicting love and emotional incarceration.
The album also flaunts a #1 Hit Single, “Lua”, which topped Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks” on the charts in its release. The minimalist song sounds more like beat poetry with a tune due to its conversational style, “Julie knows a party at some actor’s West Side loft / Supplies are endless in the evening / by the morning they’ll be gone”. You hear Oberst at his rawest, tackling issues such as drug consumption, temptation and embittered love affairs, making it a quiet confession that despite being depressive and blue, it is neither regretful nor bitter.
This record will never make a radio playlist, but its accessibility and easy-listening country arrangements make it an album that is memorable, and a heavyweight in the Indie Music scene. This 25 year old has come a long way from his days of café performances, to being worshipped by every other depressed college kid in America, but not without his insightful lyrics and poetic imagery. While he has been labelled “Next Dylan” to nauseating excess, he too, has his share of disapproving music critics who maligned him as being a poseur, immersed in adolescence ad infinitum. But this LP clearly shows how Oberst has grown and matured as an artist since his teenage years, from straight-from-the-diary poetry to communicating big themes (such as love, life, religion and death) to a larger, more mainstream audience. Bright Eyes has delivered their best work yet.