Sometimes I get the call from the editors at the Union-Tribune to write a last-minute sidebar to a wire story: obscure facts, local perspective or a selected discography of a band. The wire story in this case was a story by the Orange County Register's Ben Wener on Bright Eyes. Here's the sidebar I wrote for today's U-T.
Bright Eyes on a Dark Page: a selected discography
For the Union-Tribune
May 3, 2007
Omaha, Neb., is a speck on the vast horizons and empty plains of the Midwest. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Always desperately isolating, like the big sky and prairie could smother you like a blanket.
Oberst and his friends on his label Saddle Creek (Cursive, The Faint) came out of nowhere in the late 1990s. Literally. Bright Eyes is the story of small-town work ethic winning out over big-town money and talent winning out over major label distribution.
Here are four studio albums from Bright Eyes and Conor Oberst that cover the arc of their career:
“Letting Off the Happiness” (Saddle Creek, 1998): Singer-songwriter Oberst enlists the typical tools of the trade: Three chords, an acoustic guitar and lyrics. But it's his words that set him apart. He's drawn this generation to the craft of songwriting much the way Dylan did in the 1960s or Woody Guthrie did in the 1940s and 1950s. With stark-and-sweet Dust Bowl lyrics swept across the page like wind across the prairie, Oberst bares his soul through his words. While some naysayed his style as self-involved and annoying in its quivering self-consciousness and warbling vocal style (and put the tag “emo” on it), “Letting Off the Happiness” gave teenagers all over a voice to connect with, and the connection would grow deeper with each subsequent record.
“Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground” (Saddle Creek, 2002): Lauded as his breakthrough album, Oberst's fourth studio release yielded “Lover I Don't Have to Love,” Bright Eyes' first underground hit. The record's 13 songs wrap more orchestration, complete choir vocals and strings around Oberst's introspective lyrics. Arty and everyman in the same breath, the song “Waste of Paint” is epic and heartbreaking in its simplicity, establishing him as one of the premier tunesmiths of our time.
“I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning” and “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn” (Saddle Creek, 2005): Releasing two albums on the same day might seem like a big middle finger to the record industry and the way albums are marketed. But Bright Eyes seemed to be going in two different directions at once in 2004. The acoustic songs were sorted to the mellow “I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning,” while the electronic experimentations ended up on “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn.” Lyrically, Oberst is still at the top of his game. But the musical spark of “Digital Ash” provides Bright Eyes with an escape from the tired format of three chords on an acoustic guitar.
“Cassadaga” (Saddle Creek, 2007): Cassadaga is a town in central Florida, a permanent community (officially titled Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association) of mediums, mystics, masseurs and New Age types. It's also the latest release from Bright Eyes, a collection of 13 beautifully crafted songs in which Oberst explores spirituality with a keen eye for the emptiness of self-proclaimed prophets (The Bible is blind / The Torah is deaf / The Qur'an is mute / If you burned them all together / You'd get close to the truth).
M. Ward, Gillian Welch and Rachel Yamagata help Oberst create the down-home, folky feel of “Cassadaga.” And Oberst seems more comfortable with his voice and his place at the head of his generation's class of songwriters. He's recorded 10 albums with Bright Eyes, and this 27-year-old musician is only getting started on upgrading the lyrical content of modern music.
– CHRIS NIXON
