I'm Wide Awake It's Morning - Bright Eyes

This album was my first introduction to the world of Bright Eyes, and "band" which is essentially just an alias for Conor Oberst, the writer and performer of most of what you hear on this record. Every song on this release is a classic. Some tracks such as "First Day of my Life" jump out and have become firm favourites with fans, but I have often listened to the entire album the whole way through without once feeling the need to skip a track. The fantastically written lyrics and emotive voice of Oberst combine to create a product which is much more than the sum of its parts. Some of his later releases continue in the same vein, ...  Read the complete review

In a sense a companion review to the one that I've already completed for Bright Eyes' other 2005 album 'Digital Ash In a Digital Urn', this one gives me a chance to discuss the equally fantastic 'I'm Wide Awake, it's Morning'. From the spoken word opening, this album seems to wear its folksy credentials firmly on its sleeve and listens like a protest song. The track 'Old Soul Song (for the New World Order)' sums up the mood neatly with Conor Oberst's intelligently crafted tirades against the established order, our own acceptance of it. 'Lua' is a tale of uniquely modern detachment and Oberst painfully declaims 'The mask I polish by the morning ...  Read the complete review

Conor Oberst, the talent behind Omaha, Nebraska band Bright Eyes, tends to release an album annually from his Saddle Creek record label. Sometimes, it's a solo album, sometimes it's with another band; usually it's with Bright Eyes. In 2005, however, he released two: the electronic Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, and the folk-rock I'm Wide Awake It's Morning. Most people would be a little put off at the fact that there are now two albums, with the same release date, by the same artist, in different styles, but not me! In picking up I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, I was introduced to a world of folk on a grander scale than just one man and his guitar. This is a full ...  Read the complete review