Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
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CD Details
Artist: Bright EyesEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-04-10
Music Label: Saddle Creek
Soundtracks:
- Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)
- Four Winds
- If The Brakeman Turns My Way
- Hot Knives
- Make A Plan To Love Me
- Soul Singer In A Session Band
- Classic Cars
- Middleman
- Cleanse Song
- No One Would Riot For Less
- Coat Check Dream Song
- I Must Belong Somewhere
- Lime Tree
Music reviews of Cassadaga
Music Review: What Happened?
Rating: 1 Stars
I would never call myself a huge Bright Eyes fan, but I do enjoy them. I was introduced to them in high school with the song "A Perfect Sonnet" on the Every Day and Every Night EP, leading to me downloading and purchasing several others after that. Conor's emotional and chaotic melodies made every album unique, and I love all the awkward vocalizing and experimental noise running throughout albums like Fevers and Mirrors or Lifted.
Then came the two big albums that really hit them off commercially - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Out of the two, I preferred Digital Ash as it was rawer and more of that experimental noise I loved from Conor's music, but the critics seemed to favor I'm Wide Awake moreso, which to me just sounded like a well-written country album. Don't get me wrong, it's not a dislike of the genre - it seemed more like a return to the old days when the music wasn't cheesy and hokey. There's no "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" on that album.
Cassadega - I remember hearing the single for this in my local stores and in the movie Cloverfield, the track "Four Winds." I didn't mind it, I didn't really find it to be anything special, but it wasn't a bad song and it was kinda catchy if you kept listening to it. Still, I avoided this album as nothing really drew me into it. I just received this disc in the mail free from the Pepsi Stuff bottle cap promotion going on recently, and I must say that after taking my time to listen to this album in its entirety... it's a huge letdown.
Here's what it sounds like to me: I'm Wide Awake met with great critical and commercial success, correct? Well, why not just recreate that and make it even more polished and like everything else playing on the radio these days? I was excited when the album first started and I heard all these bizarre sound clips thinking "this is leading to something really good," but not only is the pop-shine on every song a little unlike previous albums, but the song writing is just uninventive.
Most of the tracks sound like Conor wasn't even trying - like he was holding back and just started telling these stories about people he didn't care about doing things he couldn't be bothered with, and the music is just bland and repetitious. I've noticed that on Bright Eyes albums in the past, several songs will just be the same four chords over and over on loop, but at least the lyrics will be interesting and thought provoking. This album almost put me to sleep with how boring it is.
I will say that there were three songs or so that I actually did like. "Four Winds" would be one, but that's obviously the "hooker" on the album. "Lime Tree" was another that actually had some pretty good lyrics to back it's well-thought instrumentation. The third song I can't particularly remember, but then again with Bright Eyes, song titles are usually kinda trivial unless you're looking at the booklet while listening to it which at the time I wasn't. I would like to say it was "No One Would Riot For Less" but I can't be sure.
The most interesting thing I found to be on Cassadega was the cover and the decoder square. That had me even more excited when I first opened it because I hadn't really come across any inventive CD packaging like that in a while and to me it made me even feel like I had something special on my hands. It's a shame that the disc itself wasn't as unique. If this is your first entrance to the world of Bright Eyes, I highly suggest you look in the back catalog after hearing this album - my preferred album being Lifted as it captures all that I love about Conor's music with still somewhat of a pop sensability to it. If you're a big fan of I'm Wide Awake and don't know much else about the group, then you'll probably enjoy it. Maybe not as much, but moreso than I did.
Maybe me and this album just didn't click. Either way, I would not recommend it.
Description of Cassadaga
Once tagged "rock's boy genius" by the music press, Conor Oberst turns 27 on February 15th and even without that in mind it's hard to listen to Cassadaga without hearing a newfound sophistication to the Bright Eyes sound. Producer, multi-instrumentalist and permanent band member Mike Mogis has crafted a swirling, euphonious record, at times bursting with bombastic confidence and country swagger, and at others loose-limbed and mesmeric. Trumpet and piano player Nate Walcott, a Bright Eyes player since 2003 and now the third permanent member, is responsible for the cinematic string arrangements. Other than a handful of live appearances and the release of a collection of B-sides & rarities, Bright Eyes kept mostly out of sight in 2006 after the busy 2005 which saw the simultaneous release of the sister albums Digital Ash In A Digital Urn and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. Should you have looked for them you'd have found them tucked away in various studios around the country. Recording for the first time outside of the Lincoln, NE studio belonging to Mogis, the Bright Eyes cast of players were busy in studios in Portland, OR, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. The result is the band's most confident work so far, an album so full of soaring strings and female harmonies that it feels almost buoyant in comparison to previous releases. While many latched onto the smattering of political commentary in 2005's I'm Wide Awake..., Cassadaga is less blunt in its depiction of youthful exasperation in the Bush era. References to Hurricane Katrina, holy wars and polar ice-caps may crop up, but they're buried deep amongst the ruminations on life, love, history, death and the afterlife. If I'm Wide Awake... was "the New York City album", then Cassadaga is "the America album", in which Oberst diaries his travels around the country and articulates his sense of history in the landscape. In first single "Four Winds" he is "off to old Dakota where genocide sleeps/in the Black Hills, the Badlands, the calloused East/I buried my ballast, I made my peace." Cassadaga itself crops up in the same song. The town, a community for psychics in central Florida, is visited in order to "commune with the dead". This wandering spirit is crystalized in "I Must Belong Somewhere" a song which was already a staple of live shows by the end of the 2005. "Hot Knives" is particularly spirited, bringing to mind the true energy of a Bright Eyes show. Likewise, "Soul Singer In A Session Band" - a rousing paean to an oxymoronic profession - enlists all of the elements which make the Bright Eyes live band such a euphoric experience. "Make A Plan To Plan To Love Me" is Bright Eyes at their most playful; a straight-up love song, replete with girl group vocals and Burt Bacharach strings. Oberst, the fumbling guitarist whose impassioned prose tumbles out under stark stage spotlights, is still recognizable in every track, but the songs are rich with elaborate production, cinema-sized orchestration and, at times, sprawling, almost psychedelic, atmospherics. The line up of Bright Eyes players includes Andy Lemaster (Now It's Overhead), Ben Kweller, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Janet Weiss (ex-Sleater Kinney), Jason Boesel (Rilo Kiley), John McEntire (Tortoise) M.Ward, Maria Taylor and Rachael Yamagata.On their sixth and most straightforwardly clean album, Nebraska's Bright Eyes once again integrate a revolving cast of players to the mix, including Portland tunesmith M. Ward and alt-country queen Gillian Welch. But the band remains at the helm of forever-wunderkind Conor Oberst, and the fruitful songwriter has one-upped 2005's I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning with a proficient and accessible ensemble of expansive pop orchestrations and ornate folk songs that chronicle his traverses across the American panorama. Oberst's voice quakes and wanders through South Dakota lore and Sunshine State chicanery, always the perfect vehicle for his threadbare lyrics. "Take the fruit from the tree/Break the skin with your teeth/Is it bitter or sweet/All depends on your timing," he forewarns in "Cleanse Song," a psychedelic merry-go-round of a soundtrack that joins the Scottish-tinged "Soul Singer in a Session Band" and singalong single "Four Winds" as Cassadaga's finest. The 13-song-record is certain to open more doors for a band whose recognition has soared with every release since Oberst was just 14. --Scott Holter
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