Bright EyesCassadagaGrade: A
Listeners familiar with the band Bright Eyes know that the face behind the name belongs to Conor Oberst, an indie rock veteran who started recording since he was 13 and released three cassette tapes before he turned 15. Although he and his ever-revolving cast of characters have released five full-length albums and numerous EP’s, something subtle and seemingly untouchable remained absent from record to record. Each time, however, it seemed that Oberst was getting closer and closer to realizing the potential that critics and contemporaries claimed he was capable of. Interestingly, now, at the height of Bright Eyes’ popularity and publicity, the band and, of course, Oberst stands at the top of the game with the most fully realized statement of creativity.
Evidently, Oberst took the title of the record from a little-known community in California of the same name consisting of numerous psychics. Indeed, something spiritual persists throughout the album as if Oberst is struggling to find meaning or at least, his place in music and existence. In the introduction, a voice-over of what we are lead to believe are various meetings between Oberst and psychics, one of them claims that sometimes the death card in a tarot reading doesn’t necessarily mean death; it could signify a new beginning. That feeling of freshness definitely appears throughout the record.
The album’s first single, “Four Winds” is celebratory in its sound but cynical in its content and stands as a terrific opening statement with which to kick off the record.
“The Bible is blind. The Torah is deaf. The Qur’an is mute. If you burned them all together, you’d get close to the truth.”
Oberst, a firm critic of organized religion, prefers a focus on spirituality and condemns any “class, caste, country, or sect” that reinforces any walls that we put up between each other. The most effective aspect of Oberst’s writing is the way he grandly takes on the whole world and quickly shifts to a more personal focus.
In describing his search (a search for a number of things, one supposes), Oberst sings “So I went back by rented Cadillac and company jet like a newly orphaned refugee retracing my steps all the way to Cassdaga to commune with the dead.” The record acts as a journal of Oberst’s journey, and he explores every aspect of it.
On the album’s most intriguing and experimental track, “Coat Check Dream Song,” Oberst employs a hypnotic vocal melody while his band surrounds him with an atmosphere of drums and electronics. The song contains shades of Oberst’s previous release, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn,” in which he experimented highly with a less organic sound. However, what makes Cassadaga stand out is the way the sound becomes a focused combination of the previous release: the experimentation of Digital Ash, the folk and country instrumentation of I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, the grandeur of Lifted, the melancholy of Fevers and Mirrors, and, of course, the youthful exuberance of the Letting Off the Happiness and A Collection of Songs.
The listener concludes that despite his journey, Oberst, thankfully, is not done searching as evinced by the track “I Must Belong Somewhere.” In it, Oberst claims that “everything, it must belong somewhere” and finally decides that there’s no place like home. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other places to discover and more songs to write. For our sake, let’s hope not.