Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

Bright Eyes - Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

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Category: Music CD
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CD Details

Artist: Bright Eyes
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2002-08-13
Music Label: Saddle Creek
Soundtracks:

The Big Picture
Method Acting
False Advertising
You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will
Lover I Don't Have to Love
Bowl of Oranges
Don't Know When But a Day is Gonna Come
Nothing Gets Crossed Out
Make War
Waste of Paint
From a Balance Beam
Laura Laurent
Let's Not Shit Ourselves (to Love and Be Loved)

Music reviews of Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

Music Review: I have no title, I'm too angry to come up with one.
Rating: 1 Stars

I totally agree with everyone else on this website-blog interest group, this is a terrible album. Rolling Stone, clueless and in the dark, and usually off all the time, hailed conor "bright eyes" oberst as akin to bob dylan and his spirit and songwriting ability. That's the worst misuse of the Bob Dylan name, I have ever heard. This guy surely does NOT have the so-called "goods."

Cry Baby!! That's what he is! Get on with life and for godsakes put down your friggin' guitar. That effeminate, weak little boy does nothing but sing Nick Drake covers lack the mysterious maturity, which made Drake a legend. Critics of music, like critics of everything else, like it when people cry. Something about how sick they are inside. Oberst pittles himself pitifuly many a time on tape, and thus those arrogant know-nothings love him.

Another big problem with this album is the artistic(morelikeautistic) overdub in the begginings of songs and in the middle of them. It's artsy-fartsy, annoying, and simply, the sign of a bad songwriter with too much arrogance.
Plus, if you can edit in overdub, then you can edit in better sound, 20-bit, the whole shebang. Why do some of these songs sound like John Lennnon's Plastic-Ono-Band, especially his 'My Mummy's Dead'. The things about that album, and John, is that John had a LOT of talent. That made the bad sound exscusable because it was revolutionary to put all that emotion and your guitar on a dingy tape in the big-sound inflected seventies(which was ironically put into place with the advent of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band model). The Big Picture-song is an example of this.
He was also within that post-Beatle "Primal Scream Therapy" with would explain his outreache of crying/singing form.
Conor, on the other hand, has no excuse for his uncontrollable pre-pubescent emotions with he throttles within his voice with conviction and stupidity. Wild abandon of the norm is only right when used with talented, real artists.

I must also speak for real lyracists everywhere by saying that conor cannot write any good songs. Rather than sounding like a male, or a real poet, he sounds and writes like a little girl's diary scribblings. Whiny, whiny, whiny, WHINY!
"It will just go black, it will just go back, to the way, it was before"
Did he come to save, did he come at all, and if I dried he feet, with my dirty hair, would he make me clean again
That is taken from the song, 'Don't know When But A Day's Gonna Come'. These lines use high-school like rythming; black, back. They also are empty, and almost completely without any depth. They are so meaningless that they really signify an empty gesture, just like all the other little songwriters out there who write pseudo-sensitive lyrics just to seem real, rather than the coporate slaves that they are.
The worst thing about this song, in particular, is that it copies THE Doors sound, and Sam Cooke's title and song, A Change's Gonna Come. Sure, borrow songs sometimes, that's fine; especially within folk music, heck, Bob Dylan borrowed all the time. But only when you make the song new, and in this case, within the confines of your time, your culture.
A much more successful example of borrowing this very song would be Notorious B.I.G.'s Things Done Changed. Biggy's version personalized it in a new way, like where Cooke's is futuristic, Biggy's is sad and present timed. It deals with the past while grinding insult into the new generation.
On the other hand, Conor's steals this infamous song's title(Cooke's version is often held as one of the best songs ever, coming in a week after cooke was fatally shot in a hotel, in the peak of the civil Right's movement, in response to Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' in the Wind'), and tries to make money with its history and prescense on what is supposed to be a nice, quaint, little indie label.
By the way, Conor steals the exact riff of Don't Know when But A day's gonna' come' From R.E.M.'s Drive, on Automatic For the People. R.E.M.'s version is better also.

More line: They say they don't know when but a day's gonna come, when there won't be a moon and there won't be a sun. Now men with purple hearts carry silver guns-blah blah blah, he talks about his father... and we're all bored to tears. These lyrics are so immature, especially for a guy who is 25 now, and who has been passing demos around since he was thirteen. Disgusting, and this guy has been allowed to keep making albums-that's wrong. I guess what they say is true, talent is pushed aside for someone with a name in the business. Sad, too.

In final summary, this album sounds like it was made by a fith grader with a microphone and recording equipment who simply took his parent's albums and put different lyrics to his favorite songs. Conor "Bright Eyes" Oberst should be sued like Verve was for Bittersweet symphony.
[DISCLAIMER: Verve should NOT have been sued for Bittersweet Symphony. They were a real, living, breathing, talented new band who might've made some great albums, but we don't know, do we? The Rolling Stones are responsible for killing a new band, and must never be forgiven. They're also sellouts, they're the real "grapes of wrath" personified, and 500 buks for a ticket is highway robbery of their fans]

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Description of Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

Full title - Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground. Born in 1980 in Omaha and recording since he was 13, Conor Oberst owns a voice that quakes with the tumultuous energy that only youth can produce. Slipcase. 2002.

Nebraskan wunderkind Conor Oberst writes songs so naked and heartfelt they make you feel like a voyeur just listening to them. This precocious singer-songwriter croons with the astonished intensity of a homeless Robert Smith singing for his supper. And his band's fourth album is every bit as lyrical, sprawling, and pretentious as its title. The production is notably brighter and crisper than previous efforts, with some songs, notably "Nothing Gets Crossed Out," lushly swathed in sweet-sounding strings. When Lifted is great, as on the slow-churning anthem "From a Balance Beam," it's superb, visionary pop music, on par with Jeff Mangum, Phil Elvrum, and Daniel Johnston--and on occasion, Dylan. Unfortunately, half the songs sprawl on too long or revisit the same themes too frequently. Still, anyone who can operate a fast-forward button will find much to enjoy on this vital, messy masterpiece. --Mike McGonigal

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