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Bright Eyes Lifted, or, The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground Released in 2002 9.5/10 Styles Folk Emo Country Song Highlights False Advertising Bowl of Oranges Nothing Gets Crossed Out |
I'll get the obvious point out first - Conor Oberst is a very young musician, and was only 22 during the recording of Lifted.... This point is certainly relevent, as the album's adolescent tone clearly wouldn't work coming from anyone older. The point of Oberst's age is laboured far too much, though, so let's just say that his songwriting ability is definitely impressive for someone so young, and then move on to addressing the most important question - is Lifted... a good album? The answer, at least in my view, is yes. Lifted... runs with the Bright Eyes tried-and-true theme of frustrated self-exploration and disillusionment, accompanied predominantly by a backdrop of folk/emo, but it meanders through multiple concepts and genre experiments and as it progresses from track to track. There's certainly a lot to take in on Lifted..., from a cappella styled spoken-word verses ("The Big Picture"), to waltzes ("False Advertising"), country hoe-downs ("Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and Be Loved)"), huge drunken singalong choruses ("Make War," "Laura Laurent") and multi-part mini-epics ("Don't Know When But a Day's Gonna Come"). The most suprising thing of all is, despite the total lack of focus in Bright Eyes' approach to Lifted, it ends up sounding and feeling totally cohesive. The tracks on Lifted... are generously highlight-laden. The cumbersomely titled "You Will? You? Will. You? Will. You? Will" opens with a slow, severely lo-fi introduction, in which it sounds as though Oberst may even be singing straight into a tape-deck, when suddenly the song bursts to life, boasting some excellent vocals and guitar which sound almost impossibly crisp and clear by comparison (changing black and white to colour is an appropriate analogy). "Nothing Gets Crossed Out" features a similarly uplifting crescendo finale, while "Make War" contains the curious ending of a rusty-voiced, poorly recorded chorus line drawing the song to a close, only to be cut out mid verse. "False Advertising" features the lyric "Now all anybody's looking for are the mistakes," followed by a "mistake" in the music, a yelped "Sorry!" from the culprit, and a "That's okay! That's okay!" from Oberst before counting the band back in. That track ends in an uplifting singalong, before a door is abruptly slammed on the track, with Oberst retreating to the next room to sing the following track in solitude. Production touches like these, while occasionally feeling contrived, make the songs feel truly unique. Bright Eyes don't completely rely on unusual touches to their songs though, with some of the more comparitively straightforward tracks, such as "Bowl of Oranges" and "Balance Beam," being amongst the album's highlights, with their fast-paced poppy instrumentation juxtaposing perfectly against the general thematic darkness of the vocals. The final track, "Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and be Loved)," is Lifted's most unequivocally blatant criticism of the state of the world. Very little escapes Oberst's crosshairs, from the aggressive nature of the US military ("As we take eye for an eye until no one can see / We must stumble blindly forward repeating history") to the ineffective state of the education system ("Got my grades back and forgot just as easily, but at least I got an 'A' / So I don't have them to blame"). Things can get a little heavy-handed at times, but by this late in the album, Obert's flair for the dramatic has become his biggest drawcard - a winning combination of the emotionally stirring content of his lyrics and the downright charming nature in which they are delivered, straight faced, to the listener. There are only a small handful of genuine downsides to Lifted - the opening track, "The Big Picture," is far too weak to be in such an important position on the tracklist, with its seven minutes of experimental self-indulgence being more labourous than enjoyable. The other failiure is "Lover I Don't Have to Love," which sounds heavily overproduced and radio-friendly, which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but alongside the scruffy charm of the rest of album, it stands out as a meaningless in-it-so-the-album-has-a-single inclusion. Lifted's pros do far outweight its cons, though, and the final result is a unified vision which simply oozes character. To some the flourishes which make Oberst's songs special might sound a little forced (or even trite), but at least he's doing something to give his songs a distinct identity. This gives a fair explanation of why Bright Eyes is such a divisive artist - hate him for being a pretentious angst-peddler, or love him for his creativity and meticulous production. I encourage you to at least try the latter, because Lifted... is a very enjoyable album - a huge, unfocused, pissed off near-masterpiece, which is unlike anything else. |