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| Published on thebomberjacket.com |
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
—Carl Jung
—Carl Jung
There are videos on youtube of Conor Oberst, frontman of Bright Eyes and various other projects, from when he was in his tween years. One in particular comes to mind of a scrawny boy with a high crackling voice and round John Lennon glasses in a record store in Omaha, Nebraska, over-excitedly ranting about a record store he loved. There was this image of Conor Oberst with that trademark messy done-at-home haircut, moping in the basement of his parent’s house, surrounded by books and records, writing music and wailing through tear-stained and clenched eyelids. It’s a scene like a the lyric from Letting Off the Happiness’ “The City Has Sex,” which goes, “There’s a kid in the basement with a four track machine / and he’s been strumming and screaming all night down there / The tape hiss will cover the words that he sings / They say it’s better to bury your sadness.” It’s a charming image, but it’s one that Oberst has never really been able to shake, despite all his new sounds, solo or side projects and haircuts.
Even to this day, it seems like Bright Eyes is quickly disregarded by many as being sad emo music made by a little boy, when there’s really much more to it than that. Now, looking back at those early albums twelve and then some years later, hopefully a more accurate perspective on Bright Eyes can emerge. The real relevance of the band is much more than just well penned sorrow. The lyrics are loaded with poetry that is severely self-conscious, self-deprecating, self-absorbed and just about any other hyphenated "self" term one could imagine. Every album is an introspective adventure, an psychological journey into deeply understanding oneself and one’s emotions. It's something like Carl Jung's methods or Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With A Thousand Faces,“ which relates mythological odysseys to psychology and is the basis for the Hollywood movie formula. Or it could even be like Dante’s excursion into hell in “The Inferno.” The adventure is most evident on Fevers & Mirrors, as the album's main focus is self-examination, but it’s also present on each record. The lyrics may be seem solipsistic, but that’s what makes it universal, as everyone has to face the reality of themselves in the mirror at one time or another. It makes the music into something helpful to listen to for anyone going through an emotional, existential or identity crisis…or maybe enabling those emotions is the worst possible choice. It’s always hard to decide. Yet, that’s another constant theme to Bright Eyes songs, the flexibility and confusion of truth.
May 1, 2012 saw the last round of reissues of Bright Eyes’ early releases; albums and EPs that were only previously available on vinyl compiled into a boxed set. The records represent some of Bright Eyes’ most inaccessible material and as such, this group of reissues is probably a bad starting point to dive into as a first exposure to the band. As the records get progressively easier to listen to, even going backwards through a discography mimics that inward adventure, with each one becoming another descent into a deeper circle of self-inflicted hell. So, it’s probably better to start with a more recent release and work backward. The easiest way for the likes of casual listeners to get sucked in might be from the upright pop and conscious attempt at positivity of the most recent The People’s Key or the messy full member collaboration of Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band’s Outer South or maybe when his warbling voice is blended with Jim James and M. Ward on Monsters of Folk. Whatever the starting point, it’s better to let curiosity slowly tug you backwards, and downward, after that.
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