Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
List Price:
Our Price: $8.89
You Save: $5.09 (36%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Music CD
See more CD details
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
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: Get The CD!!!!
Rating: 5 Stars
I remember a couple months ago my father brought this home on CD and showed it to me. He had heard of it but remembered that the cover (and inside) were lenticular screens, and it came with a "spectral decoder," to see what the screens showed. I thought it was really cool, packaging wise, but i didn't listen to the music until a couple months later.
Eventually I put it on my Ipod, and decided to put it on while I read a book. I heard the opening notes of Clairuadients, and I was absolutely hooked. As the album progressed throught Four Winds and Make a Plan to Love Me, I was thinking "Holy crap! An album where I like every single song the first time around!" I couldn't put it down. Now normally I absolutely hate country and folk, but as I heard this I was absolutely amazed at the voice, orchestration, and songwriting quality. I didn't even know who Conor Oberst was until a couple months later.
Regarding the music, this is an amazing introduction to Conor Oberst, or Bright Eyes. This is the only exception I have made in my dislike of Country and Folk music. The album demonstrates incredible coherence, each song being in the proper place. Now I remember reading the reviews for "Lifted" and reading about how people dislike his voice. I personally think that those people need to go get their hearing checked, I find his voice is perfect, even if he doesn't have the range of Freddie Mercury or Thom Yorke. Conor Oberst has been hailed as the twenty first century Bob Dylan. If you (like me), can't listen to Dylan's voice, try Bright Eyes.
I didn't even look at the lyrics to this album until I bought "I'm Wide Awake It's Morning" almost a year later. After I looked through the lyrics to that, I picked up Cassadaga's liner notes. I never realized how good a lyricist he is until looking through the liner notes.
DO NOT BUY THIS AS AN MP3 DOWNLOAD!!! YOU MUST GET THIS AS A CD! YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!
This is a fantastic introduction into the musical world of Conor Oberst. Buy this album if you liked Roger Waters's Amused to Death. Buy this if you like Bob Dylan, although don't expect the guitar at the center of attention. Buy this if you are an aspiring lyricist or an English teacher. Buy this if you like this review.
If you want to sample several songs before buying the CD, try Clairaudients (You need to be patient with that), Four Winds, Hot Knives (just be careful about where you play that, listen to it on headphones first), and Lime Tree.
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
General CDs
Music Genres
Bestsellers in General CDs
Kings of Leon - Only by the NightRCA; Release date: 2008-09-23; Music CD
Best price: $7.87
Price in other shops:
Muse - The ResistanceRelease date: 2009-09-15; Music CD
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
Twilight SoundtrackRelease date: 2008-11-04; Music CD
Best price: $8.05
Price in other shops:
Creed - Full CircleCreed; Release date: 2009-10-26; Music CD
Best price: $9.47
Price in other shops:
Foo Fighters - Greatest Hits (Deluxe CD+DVD)Sony; Release date: 2009-11-03; Music CD
Best price: $11.94
Price in other shops:
Pink Martini - Splendor in the GrassDig; Release date: 2009-10-27; Music CD
Best price: $11.80
Price in other shops:
![Live at Royal Albert Hall [CD/DVD] Image](/images/Live-at-Royal-Albert-Hall-CD-DVD-B002Q4TKAY-X.jpg)
The Killers - Live at Royal Albert Hall [CD/ DVD]Dig; Release date: 2009-11-10; Music CD
Best price: $12.44
Price in other shops:
They Might Be Giants - Here Comes ScienceRelease date: 2009-09-08; Music CD
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
Owl City - Ocean EyesRelease date: 2009-07-28; Music CD
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
The Twilight Saga: New Moon SoundtrackRelease date: 2009-10-16; Music CD
Best price: $9.44
Price in other shops:
Similar CDs
Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band - Outer SouthRelease date: 2009-05-05; Music CD
Best price: $9.92
Price in other shops:
Bright Eyes - A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997Release date: 2000-06-01; Music CD
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
Conor Oberst - Conor OberstRelease date: 2008-08-05; Music CD
Best price: $9.91
Price in other shops:
Bright Eyes - Noise Floor (Rarities: 1998-2005)Release date: 2006-10-24; Music CD
Best price: $9.10
Price in other shops:
Letting Off the HappinessRelease date: 1998-11-02; Music CD
Best price: $9.31
Price in other shops:
Bright Eyes - Fevers and MirrorsRelease date: 2000-05-30; Music CD
Best price: $7.50
Price in other shops:
Bright Eyes - Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the GroundRelease date: 2002-08-13; Music CD
Best price: $7.15
Price in other shops:
Bright Eyes - Digital Ash in a Digital UrnRelease date: 2005-01-25; Music CD
Best price: $7.90
Price in other shops:
Bright Eyes - Four WindsRelease date: 2007-03-06; Music CD
Best price: $3.49
Price in other shops:
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's MorningRelease date: 2005-01-25; Music CD
Best price: $8.21
Price in other shops: