Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning: Album Review

Bright Eyes, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (Saddle Creek, 2005)
I don't usually mess around with album reviews by request, but a fellow was kind enough to send this to me and I'm not near my computer with all of the legally downloaded from Apple Computers music on it, so I said why not. If anybody could get me that new Frank Black album, I'd be glad to review it, too.

AT THE BOTTOM OF EVERYTHING

It's interesting to note that Conor Oberst is maybe the only person in the history of the music industry to have at least two of those MTV's You Hear It First segments (one earlier this year and one in, I believe, 2002), I guess because the tall Israelis over there didn't expect anybody to notice the second time they tried to pass this shit off as if it was about to be the next big thing, not unlike they did with Atmosphere a couple of years ago.

WE ARE NOWHERE AND IT'S NOW

Which suggests to me that one of the TI's over there that decides who gets thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of free, unwarranted publicity (Conor Tehgheyburst, MIA, and "Annie") and who gets to wallow in complete and utter obscurity for the rest of their lives (basically everybody else) must have some sort of crush on this dude and could have possibly received oral from him at some point in time.

OLD SOUL SONG (FOR THE NEW WORLD ORDER)

With that said, this ain't that bad of an album at all, even if there is a huge gay conspiracy behind it. Several of the songs have an easy, 70s-ish country rock vibe that you just don't hear as often, and the dude has all of these weird vocal tics that I guess are supposed to make him sound more "emotional," which is what all of the kids are into these days.

LUA

No homo Juelz Santana, but I recall seeing the video for this a couple of times on that weird video channel that comes from up in Canada. You know the one.

TRAIN UNDER WATER

At 6 minutes-plus, this is one of the more tedious and lyrically obtuse moments in an album that basically consists of nothing but tedious, lyrically obtuse moments.

FIRST DAY OF MY LIFE

Fortunately, he manages to reign himself in here quite a bit and busts out some rather optimistic lyrics. In particular, I was amused when he went, "I went out in the rain and suddenly everything changed!"

ANOTHER TRAVELIN' SONG

Again, a bit twangier than what I generally prefer, but you can't help but kind of like it, I think because it's a little bit faster than most of the other songs on here (especially on the second half).

LAND LOCKED BLUES

Just him and the background singer chick singing "acapulco" for at least two-thirds of its runtime. The last third ain't that special either.

POISON OAK

I'm sure this would be very emotionally affecting if I still had the ability to feel anything other than the occasional bit of schadenfreude and not much else. The part towards the end where he calls whoever he's singing to a "yellow bird" is especially stark.

ROAD TO JOY

The idea of adding words (unless there already were words) to "Ode to Joy" is pretty fucking retarded, but I enjoy the general raucousness of this, especially the part when he goes, "Let's fuck it all up boys, make some noise!"

COMMENTS: The first half of this actually completely lives up to its level of hype, as far as I'm concerned, but nothing on the second half other than "Road to Joy" really did it for me at all, nh, and some of it was just plain annoying.

BEST TRACKS: The first four are all pretty dang solid.