Bright Eyes - Cassadaga (Universal)
4/5
By: Matt Tomiak
Conner Oberst is, it's fair to say, something of a phenomenom in the world of indie. An artist who carries more baggage than perhaps any of his peers, there's an abundance of superfluous diversions serving as a distraction from his (remarkably prolific) output of affecting, heart-on-sleeve alt-rock.
Whether it's the shrieking, hysterical acolytes that populate his concert audiences, Oberst's doe-eyed, big-fringed sensitive boy-poet appearance or gradual transition from obscure Nebraskan scene folkie to internationally-lauded stardom, there's plenty that gets in the way of actually talking about the man and his music.
'Cassadaga', the 27 year old Oberst's seventh studio album, comes complete with a 'special decoder', a transparent plastic screen device which, when placed on the sleeve, provides grainy, 'Da Vinci Code'-style images and cryptic slogans on a surface that would otherwise resemble a scrambled display of television interference. A neat metaphor for Oberst's career, itself subject to endless attempts at deciphering and dissection.
We embark upon this journey with 'Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed.)' A disembodied female voice spouts new-age psychobabble about vortexes and life transformations -the album takes its title from a Floridian psychic community- instructing the listener to 'Go to Nevada, and then go to California, and then come south and go back through Arizona, then go through Texas...get rid of the old feeling' whilst swirling, trippy strings gradually rise to a crescendo before Oberst's gentle vocals kick in. On occasion in the past, his fragile, little-boy-lost singing voice had a tendency to grate when engaged in more introspective subject matter, but when he's addressing our troubled, tumultuous age as he is here, it seems somehow very appropriate: apprehensive and uneasy, young and yet strangely world-weary. 'Clairaudients', then, is a stark introduction; one part 'The Waste Land', one part Tom Cruise-ian meltdown. The track queasily laments the 'Holy wars/Been tried ten thousand times before' and the death of idealism. 'It's kill or be killed...would you agree times have changed?' challenges Oberst. It's hard not to concur.
'Four Winds' may posses an ostensibly innocuous 70s soft rock feel, but with its disavowal of all the major world religions and references to 'bodies decomposing in containers tonight in an abandoned building', uncomfortably evocative of the regular images beamed back from Iraq in 2007, it couldn't feel more contemporary.
'Cassadaga' occasionally hints at erstwhile highlights amongst the sizeable Bright Eyes back catalogue. 'No One Would Riot For Less' begins like a souped-up version of Oberst's delicate, cold-light-of-day lament 'Lua' from 'I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning' but transforms into a haunting existential exposition. 'I Must Belong Somewhere' is a cathartic, country-tinted rollick akin to 'I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning.' But this album transcends the B.E. past, with big themes like a search for meaning and love recurring throughout.
'Hot Knives' and 'Make A Plan To Love Me' both capture a yearning for affection, whilst the regal 'If The Breakman Turns My Way' feels like Obert's answer to REM's 'Everybody Hurts'; a plea (possibly directed by Oberst to himself) for salvation when 'all your friends and sedatives mean well but make it worse.'
'Classic Cars', a hallucinatory tale of a lost romance, draws upon vintage Neil Young, and in particular 'Out On The Weekend', the opening track on Young's 1972 alt-rock tour de force 'Harvest.' Even Oberst's promise that 'if I get out of California/I'm going back to my home state' parallels Young's promise to 'get a pick-up/take it down to LA.' 'Soul Singer In A Session Band' transposes 'Bringing It All Back Home'-era Bob Dylan to the 21st century with its jaunty, yet surrealist take on a jobbing musician. 'A red carpet bagger makes a Blackberry call/ To the plastic piranhas in the city of salt' yelps Oberst....it's like 'Gates of Eden' for the modern technological era.
An album to rival Arcade Fire's 'Neon Bible' in terms of scope and ambition, 'Cassadaga' is a fraught, intricate but thoroughly fascinating journey through the landscape of modern America. There surely won't be many better records in 2007.
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment