Indie goes country (I'm Wide Awake It's Morning - Bright Eyes)

Member Name: edinburgher

Product:	I'm Wide Awake It's Morning - Bright Eyes
Date:	12/01/09 (76 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Poetic, folksy tracks and thoughtfully penned lyrics

Disadvantages: None

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 looks like shit.' One of my favourite tracks on the album 'Train Under Water' sings about love and confusion and the lyrics convey the sense of frustration wonderfully, as Oberst breaks into a yell by the end of the track.

'Another Travelin' Song' is a gem of a track, with a real sense of escapism and the wonder felt with the discovery of new horizons. Oberst shares vocal duties with a female singer and their duet, his excited whoops and the staccato percussion carries the track along well. Sounds like a modern country classic fighting folk rock and is one of the highlights of the record (even with some rather off putting lyrics that display the lead singer's personal feelings about corporations rather well).

'Land Locked Blues' is a wonderful song (again with shared vocals), where the artists sing at such a measured pace that they're barely singing at all - almost as if the lyrics deserve the clarity achieved by the effect. The track does pick up slightly towards the end, but listen to it quietly enough (as I have to do at work!) and you would be forgiven for thinking that it is a spoken word track.

The second last track 'Poison Oak' is a moving tribute to memory and family sorrows and everything ends with the explosively bombastic call to arms against the establishment that is of 'Road to Joy'. Yes, you read that last description correctly ;-)

One of those wonderful groups that it is very difficult to force into a genre, Bright Eyes do us all a favour on this recording by blending their indie rock sounds with country, blues and folk. It's fresh, imaginative and the perfect antidote to the slightly gloomier 'Digital Ash in a Digital Urn'. I can honestly say that the group excels at taking new genres and stealing what they need from them to polish their sound. This is a somewhat meatier recording than 'Digital Ash' and the confident performance offered by the group belies a set of artists in fine form who are enjoying what they do.

Please feel free to read my other review for a taste of something very different and make sure you take the time to track down this recording.

Summary: Bright Eyes deliver with their first release of 2005