Stream the new LP from The Mountain Goats right now from NPR. Supposedly inspired by heavy metal that is a guilty pleasure for songwriter John Darnelle, All Eternal's Deck thankfully maintains The Mountain Goat's sound, but with a never before seen intensity. There was a glimmer of aggression with the song "Psalms 40:2" on 2009's excellent post-apocalyptic biblical themed The Life of the World to Come.
The first listen is favorable, for how it could sound with heavy metal in mind (and the fact that there's a song called "Liza Forever Minnelli"). The album has a lot of diversity beyond that too, including a viking hymn "High Hawk Session." It's also loaded with clever little lines per usual, like "see that young man that dwells inside his body like an uninvited guest" in "Birth of Serpents." Seems like the album kicks off the story with a man who has been bitten by a Vampire with the first track, "Damn These Vampires." Like most of the Mountain Goats albums, it carries an intriguing story that can only be unwound with multiple listens.
The vinyl of the album has an alternative cover (below). The first 500 pre-orders also came with a cassette that included individual hand drawn artwork. It's great to see bands the size of The Mountain Goats doing things like this.
Destroyer :: Kaputt ~ Merge Records ~ Vancouver, Canada ~ January 25th 2011
Kaputt is a swooping and swelling piece of ambiance, taking Destroyer's usually guitarocentric music into alternate arrangements. The synth, saxophone, and female backing vocals form a sleezy and sexy lounge club aesthetic that provides a different niche, or perhaps outlet, for Daniel Bejar's goofy vocals. Destroyer lyrics have always been loaded with reflection on the music industry and Bejar's place in it. The overall effect of Kaputt gives the impression of a man exhausted with his struggle, perhaps attempting to embody what he feels he's been reduced to. As such, it sounds kind of like a bad old MTV R&B video or 80's porno music.
It is loaded with introspection and some social commentary, like "It's not a war until someone loses and eye" on "Savage Night at the Opera." All of it, even the sound, can be taken with a beautifully dry sense of humor. The line "I write poetry for myself" on "Blue Eyes" switches off between a declaration of artistic intention and the random ramblings of a pill-riddled and distracted mind. "I wrote a song for America, they told me it was clever" seems to haunt and confuse Bejar in "Song for America." You have to wonder which song from the Destroyer back-catalog is the song for America.
Like The National's High Violet last year, Kaputt is a record that inspires an interesting idea: that the album make much more sense in the context of the artists other work. Kaputt is very much a subversion of Destroyer's style. Albums like City of Daughters are mostly composed of acoustic guitar and tomes of lyrics. Even when the band branched out into experimental territory as on the cleverly composed Streethawk: A Seduction, it was still focused on words and guitar. Kaputt is a sonically distinct album, very well self-contained, and surprisingly more focused on the music than the words. A good example is the vinyl only exclusive "track" or tracks or sequence entitled "The Laziest River." The LP comes with one side of the double vinyl completely devoted to the sound experiment composed of five parts. Like "The Bay of Pigs (Detail)," it is patient and serves as a nice twenty minute introduction to the song.
Kaputt is a lovely experiment for the Vancouver band and when seen live it seems to make all the more frizzy haired sense.
"Downtown" on Jimmy Fallon::
Music Video for "Kaputt" Directed by Dawn Garcia (further gloriously explaining the oddity and that dry sense of humor) ::
Tracklisting ::
01. Chinatown
02. Blue Eyes
03. Savage Night at the Opera
04. Suicide Demo for Kara Walker
05. Poor in Love
06. Kaputt
07. Downtown
08. Song for America
09. Prelude (Estuary)
10. Nagel's Marimba
11. The Laziest River
12. Palm Springs Life
13. Landing on Water
14. Bay of Pigs (Detail)
The Babies :: The Babies ~ Shrimper Records ~ Brooklyn, NY ~ Febuary 8th, 2011
In 2008, Woods bassist Kevin Morby and Vivian Girls guitarist/singer Cassie Ramone moved in together for a few months in Brooklyn. It was love at first living together. The success of both of their projects had them missing 'sweaty loft shows,' which apparently was the genesis of The Babies. This act is the marriage of two Mango Nebula favorites that are doing very interesting things right now. The result is quite addictive. They even recorded it in Morby's own bedroom. Good to know they record will have that demo-esque coziness.
Tracklist::
01 Run Me Over
02 Sunset
03 All Things Come to Pass
04 Voice Like Thunder
05 Meet Me in the City
06 Personality
07 Breakin' the Law
08 Sick Kid
09 Wild 1
10 Wild 2
11 Caroline
one inbred, transdimensional, reptilian alien baby; one lion of Judah with a Bright Eyes hair cut; one Hitler mustache with dread locks; one ladder to somewhere; and one for Conor Oberst.
The rumors about The People’s Key being Bright Eyes’ last album came from a certain magazine’s interview that has since disappeared from the web. Songwriter Conor Oberst said, “It does feel like it needs to stop at some point. I'd like to clean it up, lock the door, say goodbye.” By no means did he mean that he was going to hang up his guitar for good. When talking about Oberst, the president of Saddle Creek Records, Robb Nasel, told a local Omaha paper, “I think he feels like Bright Eyes has a certain association, for better or worse. I think he's trying to distance himself a little bit from what that means to people.” What that meaning is could be anything. It could mean being a sad singer or being branded with the blasphemous, close-minded “e” word or the obligation of opening every single record with a sound collage.
On “A Machine Spiritual (In the People’s Key)” the chorus rings, “‘Please let me go,’ the prisoner moans, ‘No one has to know.’” It recalls the prisoner in Lifted’s “From a Balance Beam,” which says, “in all of my salvation I still felt imprisonment inside that cell…that is myself.” This "title track" is very much about being trapped in one's ways. The spiritual machine is a theory by the inventor of the synthesizer, a man named Ray Kurzweil, which becomes a clever reference to the prevalent use of synth on the album. It's an idea that eventually human consciousness will fuse with the internet and will no longer have to eat, sleep, or even die. In an interview with Spinner.com, Oberst said, "I think it's 100% achievable, especially when you think about how fast new machines invent newer machines, which invent the newer machines." So the idea becomes a reference to a self-perpetuating existence, trapped in some kind of code. The title is even more potent with its word ordering, making it seems as if the machine manufactures a person's spirit, pumping one out after the other. In an interview with NPR, Oberst said that "the people's key" was the key of "C," because "because you can hit all the white keys and you won't be playing out of key. It's the easiest key to play in for amateurs." The idea that the album is called this is in itself a bit of subtle self-deprecation as the "backwards black faced minstrel show" in the lyrics that "played it all from memory."
Distancing himself from some of the musical associations was a serious focus on every project beginning with the last Bright Eyes album, the rootsy and impressively orchestrated Cassadaga and through his fixed jam band “solo career.” Then Jason Boesel, drummer for Bright Eyes and The Mystic Valley band, said back in September of last year that the new record was “the best sci-fi emo album of the last twenty years.” It’s a stylistic direction that comes as kind of a shock at first, but when heard, it bears a strong resemblance to the psychic mysticism from Cassadaga. The People’s Key falls somewhere in the spectrum between 2005’s Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and the punk rock side project Desaparecidos. There are parts that twinkle electronic and others that blaze quickly with distortion, making for the most accessible Bright Eyes album to date. It’s all accompanied by Rastafarian ideology and alien campfire stories. Oberst explained to NME magazine that the sound was, “for lack of a better term, contemporary, or modern,” or maybe even futuristic.
Although the record is kind of a musical departure from typical Bright Eyes form, on The People’s Key Oberst’s lyrics are very much the opposite. They’re about getting back in touch with earlier Bright Eyes releases as well as Oberst’s younger self, sitting in a basement with a four-track machine, strumming and screaming all night to pen his songs. That’s exactly what makes this album or any other album a “Bright Eyes album.” It’s not the somber, warbling, tear drenched stories about indecisive romances with a slow acoustic guitar. It’s not even the constant preoccupation with death and existential questioning of the afterlife. It’s the way that the records talk to one another through lyrical allusions and musical contradictions. It’s the saga of the internal struggles and transformations of this fictional character that Oberst has created, mostly based on himself. The fact that the tagline attached to this record like a sticker to the plastic wrap is “Bright Eyes’ final album” is significant, because in a lot of ways the record is a retrospective. What makes The People's Key so strong is that in returning to writing honest lyrics on how Oberst feels about his musical career and who it has made him, he has published a very complete dénouement chapter of the story.
The People’s Key opens up with a conversation about aliens, Hitler, and the fourth dimension with “Firewall.” The voice is a friend of Oberst’s named Danny Brewer who makes trippy music called Refried Ice Cream in his house in El Paso, Texas. Brewer talks about an alternate version of the Bible’s genesis in which the angels that came from heaven were actually aliens that proceeded to rape the humans in order to inbreed with them, resulting in half-reptilian babies after a few thousand years. Oberst told Spinner that “a lot of people could dismiss his ideas as conspiracy theories but, to me, as far out there as this stuff is, there's so much truth in it…Obviously, people's perception of it is different and one person's reality is another person's fantasy and vice versa.”
The role reversal of the angels rephrases the question of truth present on most Bright Eyes albums, the connectedness between good and evil, of life and death, as well as Oberst’s fears for his own salvation. He explained it quite well saying, "Everyone wants to be saved by something, I guess, whether it’s aliens or Jesus." The song that follows is a walk (and a nap) in a theme park. There are juxtapositions like “light to dark can shift in an instant,” a line about the classic versus the experimental: “the classicists, the posturing avant-garde,” and a time full of life like childhood contrasted with a death a child wouldn’t understand: “fills my mind with jump ropes and slit wrists.” “Firewall” is also the song with the strongest female presence, a hologram. She is something intangible, slipping through his very real fingers.
The People’s Key makes references to a few absolute rulers. On one side of the spectrum is Hitler, who is referenced quite a few times. There are direct references in “A Machine Spiritual” and “One for You, One for Me.” In “Jejune Stars,” the chorus repeats about Oberst putting an umbrella under his arm saying, “if it’s true what we’re made of, why do I hide from the rain?” It’s a nod to “Cartoon Blues,” from the Four Winds EP, where he says, “People are made up of water and fear.” The gesture draws associations to an anecdote about Hitler when he went to meet with Neville Chamberlain to discuss the annexation of Czechoslovakia. Apparently Hitler laughed at Chamberlain for carrying an umbrella with him.
On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the Lion of Judah, Haile Selassie. He was an Ethiopian Emperor and many believed him to be the messiah of the Rastafari movement. Oberst told Interview magazine that there was “a lot of the mythology that sprung up around him, it's not like something he asked for, having people deify him.” It’s certainly something that Oberst can relate to with people at concerts bursting into tears around him and jumping up on stage to bow before him. The song “Haile Selassie” nods at this connection as an unknown female voice sings through a blown Leslie speaker, “calling me home like Haile Selassie.”
“Firewall” introduces the main Rastafari concept on the album, that of “I and I.” At first, the sentiment seems very solipsistic particularly because it’s not in any song with Rasta references like “Haile Selassie,” and is just Oberst singing “I and I” over and over again. However, the idea is quite the opposite. It is carried through the album on nearly every song in different words, all the way through to “One for You, One for You.” The name of that song itself is a play on the concept. The basic idea is that instead of a difference between two people there should be a one-ness, of treating others as if they were you, demonstrated in the phrase by using the same pronoun. Oberst sings at end the album, “You and me, that is an awful lie. It’s I and I.” In “Firewall” the last lines are, “bust through the fire wall into heaven and then I’m standing in that blinding light. Crooked crosses falling from the sky.” The album’s cover then becomes the obstacle of hell, the struggle of atonement which can only be accomplished through Oberst’s newfound Rastafarian concept. He can only enter that white light the way he repeats at the end of the song: “seen yeah, seen by I and I.”
Then there’s Ceasar.
The People’s Key is loaded with references to other Bright Eyes albums. Even the simple cut out pattern of the album is reminiscent of their first. The single from the record is “Shell Games” and it begins with “Took the fireworks and the vanity, the circuit board and the city streets, shooting star, swaying palm tree, laid them at the Arbiter’s feet.” Each item in that list is a symbol of a previous record. The fireworks are the cover of Letting off the Happiness, the vanity is Fevers & Mirrors, the circuit board signifies Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, the streets of New York City are I’m Wide Awake, I’ts Morning, and the shooting star and swaying palm tree are for Cassadaga. Oberst says that he laid each at the feet of the “Arbiter,” who may be critics, may be just the listeners, or it may be St. Peter who stands at the gates of heaven. One album is, however, missing. There’s no symbol of Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground. This becomes a clever reference to “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves” and a statement of how personal that record is to Oberst, when he sings, “I do not read the reviews. No, I am not singing for you.”
In addition to references to other albums, many songs talk about going back to childhood and starting over. “Jejune” means juvenile or childish and the song has the lines, “So it starts again at our childhood’s end. I’ll die young at heart.” “A Machine Spiritual” ends with “We are starting over.” In “Beginner’s Mind” he sings, “You know what made you infamous to them, don’t you? You keep starting over.” The same song ends with a few lines Oberst directs at his younger self, “Stay a while my Inner Child, I’d like to learn your trick. To know what makes you tick.” It breaks away from the electric guitar and strips down to a familiar Oberst arrangement, just his voice and an acoustic guitar and an over accentuated warble. Suddenly, Oberst’s departure from Bright Eyes comes into a different light. Perhaps he departed for livelier, more carefree sounds and lyrics, because he doesn’t feel the same as his younger self. “Hold on tight Beginner’s Mind. The current is far too strong. It will carry you along until you’re just like everyone.” The fear becomes getting watered down with age. To be liberated of the fever that used to plague him, but to have also lost the inspiration. Oberst finishes by telling what he wants to his inner child, “to nurse you when you’re sick.”
Caesar comes into play, recollecting Oberst’s words about cleaning things up, locking the door, and saying goodbye. In “Firewall,” Oberst sings “I and I make toast to the Caesars.” A lot of “Haile Selassie” is about closing up shop with “all this despair is forgiven” and “all of our days are numbered.” It’s also about finding an apprentice. “I’ve taken some comfort in knowing the wave has crested, knowing I don’t have to be an exception.” The cresting wave, like the last page of a book. “Children they fill the bleachers,” as perhaps at an rock show, “One is the next Caesar.” Oberst then recognizes what he has left to do, “Keep all their minds collected until he comes, until he comes.”
If Oberst is a monarch of sorrow, then the Hitler and Selassie references gain a new significance. The spectrum becomes a scale, or a ladder, from the ruler that Oberst doesn’t want to be to the salvation he wants to achieve.
So, Oberst returns to his roots and with “Ladder Song” he gains the sentiment he was looking for in “Beginner’s Mind.” Full of evocative imagery and the best penned lyrics on the album, “Ladder Song” captures a truly honest moment. It has haunting lines like “this whole life is a hallucination.” Also, “you’re not unique in dying” recalls the end of Lifted; how a suicidal musician isn’t a new story. The jejune star returns with, “See now a star is born, looks just like a blood orange.” The line is like the fruit from Cassadaga, like “Cleanse Song.” It’s all about the timing of things, knowing when to bite into the fruit and knowing when to throw it away. Perhaps the star has another meaning, like in the entertainment industry, and is the new Caesar. Or perhaps it’s a more direct reference to the “fruit” in “Lime Tree.” Oberst gives us a beautiful image of what will happen to him. He will “get to the concert, run off with a dancer. Gonna celebrate.”
The album ends with a grizzled promotion of love and knowledge again by Brewer. He starts fumbling his speech, looking for something that he can't recall. Oberst supplies the word that is very familiar to him, a word that is something he is also looking for, from every person and entity that might be listening. Oberst says, "mercy."
The record is, of course, not as prolific or complete as Lifted or I’m Wide Awake. For one, it lacks the romantic journey that was so fun to follow on the other albums. Where it falters most is where the Rastafari professions seem a bit bland and feel like they belong more in the self-help section, such as the chorus for “Shell Games.” They seem like mantras that Oberst doesn’t really believe, but must repeat until he does. There are plenty of other lyrics that make up for it, like the standout track “Approximate Sunlight” in which Oberst makes the statement that we are “post-everything.” He also comically criticizes Cassadaga and his attempt at new age enlightenment with, “lick the solar plexus of some L.A. shaman.” The song is carpeted with some background noise as well, which are recordings Oberst made at various parties. The girl saying “He does have a tower that watches everything!” recalls the girls talking about cars and boys from a Desaparecidos track. Apparently Oberst carries a recorder with him everywhere these days.
The fact remains that no one writes music like this. Bright Eyes albums have a literary depth that seems cripplingly meticulous with an obsessive attention to detail, but sounds effortless. What’s more, the lyrical themes are brought to life by making the music and album packaging match them stylistically. All of which is reinvented on every single album.
Since that initial article last year, Oberst said to Interview about the future of Bright eyes, “You know, I'm leaving it open to whatever happens. I'm kind of like, "never say never." I think it will be the last one for the foreseeable future. But we're definitely not making any absolute statements.”
B-SIDES
Singularity::
In the Real World::
Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott on the making of the album::
Full album stream and action packed listening party::
Bright Eyes :: Cassadaga ~ Saddle Creek ~ Omaha, NE ~ April 10th, 2007
To commemorate the release of The People’s Key, the first Bright Eyes record in four years (and most likely the last for a while), it seemed appropriate to look back at the last chapter, Cassadaga. The mix attached to this article is an interpretation, a juxtaposition, a blasphemy, and an alternate psychic dimensional version of the album that combines it with b-sides and tracks from the album’s Four Winds EP. The alternate name comes from a lyric in “Cartoon Blues,” and thus is presented Cassadaga orTurning from a Cartoon Back into a Man.
When the cartoon is drawn together, a new story emerges about underground fame and the conflicted relationship one has with the concept of home, as well as a tale of emotional fidelity. It’s about Cleansing or purging to find contentment or acceptance or redemption. Of course, these synonyms barely scratch the surface of some of the deep, indescribable abstractions present on every Bright Eyes record that makes multiple listens not just discoveries or explorations, but expeditions.
Cassadaga
or Turning from a Cartoon Back into a Man
1. Clairaudients (Kill or be Killed)
2. If the Brakeman Turns My Way
3. Cartoon Blues
4. Tourist Trap
5. Four Winds
6. Cleanse Song
7. Susan Miller Rag
8. Middleman
9. Endless Entertainment
10. Coat Check Dream Song
11. Soul Singer in a Session Band
12. Hot Knives
13. Lime Tree
14. I Must Belong Somewhere
Released in 2007,Cassadaga showed Oberst's lyrical talents evolving to include stronglyevocative imagery. The sound was bursts of soulful Americana that branched out into diverse territory with string accompaniments and other instrumentation courtesy of Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. The spectral decoder included in the packaging that revealed hidden messages all over the album suited it perfectly and even won a Grammy.
However, the album was markedly different than any previous Bright Eyes record. Each album has a similar story arc or skeleton formed by the song order. Experimentation is always an expectation for Bright Eyes releases, although on Cassadaga the story seemed incomplete, its pieces shuffled.
The record’s confusion came from Oberst feeling restricted by the stylistic obligations of Bright Eyes. It’s an influence that overshadows every one of his releases from Cassadaga onwards. When he started playing with The Mystic Valley Band, he said something to the effect that you can only write so many songs about being lost. Certain Cassadaga tracks foreshadowed his departure from Bright Eyes with an inclination towards simpler, vaguer pop songs or sing-a-longs. The record’s drawbacks are that it sacrifices some meaning and thematic cohesion due to its musical indecision. Torn between wanting to stay true to the spirit of Bright Eyes and wanting to exonerate itself from the shackles of sorrow.
Sonically, the main goal of the album is the latter with a few references to other Bright Eyes lyrics (and even a new hair cut) to support it. Oberst always takes the time to revisit, update and criticize his own ideas. From “Soul Singer in a Session Band,” the line “Sorrow is pleasure when you want it instead” reflects “The sound of loneliness makes me happier” on I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’s “Poison Oak” and “The pleasure that my sadness brings” from Fevers & Mirrors’ “Haligh, Haligh, a Lie, Haligh.” However, in contrast to existential or romantic entrapment respectively, “Soul Singer” presents an artistic dilemma. In an interview with NME magazine, Oberst said the song was about “anyone that’s confined by their situation that could perhaps be something greater or more fully realized.” The metafiction pops up in other spots on the album as well. “Cleanse Song” ends with “Hear the charms? Did you know that the wind when it blows it is older than Rome and our joy and our sorrow.”
It’s an idea that is well summed up in the b-side “Susan Miller Rag.” Its advice is to “relax you’re grieving,” “relax you’re law,” “relax your cause” and “groove.” The song is deeply connected to the album, as two of its lyrics are messages revealed by the spectral decoder. One is written in French and translates to “Is it midnight or high noon?” Playing with Oberst’s love of opposites, like “from the deep sea dive to the nosebleed altitudes.” The other is “Mighty Saturn enters your eighth house.” It’s a direct reference to a part of astrology that embodies a lot of Oberst’s themes. The eighth house is a “sphere of life” that involves sex, money, debts, loss, signifies drastic change, and most importantly: it juxtaposes death and rebirth. Internet research on Susan Miller doesn’t turn up a lot of information, but one Susan Miller does happen to be an astrologist.
There are a lot of mystical allusions on the album, although Oberst denies any underlying psychic themes. A clairaudient is like a clairvoyant, except instead of visions it has to do with hearing. There’s an inclination towards new age medicine and spirituality, including the small town in Florida that the album is named after. Oberst described it as “surrounded by swampland that pulses with a gothic, Savannah-type vibe, but with white trash magic.” The name comes from the Seneca language and means “rocks beneath the water,” which is another secret message that appears on the album sleeve.
In an interview with the online magazine Lazy-I, Oberst said, "I really wanted to go there. I built it up in my mind. I thought I could find something I was looking for.” The town is populated by spiritual advisors, psychics, and mediums. Oberst explained “There's a chalkboard out front that lists the people who are working that day. You make an appointment and go to their homes. Most of them have converted their front rooms into reading parlors.” These people are perhaps the voices on the audio recording portions of “Clairaudients.” However, they aren’t you’re typical telethon psychics. Oberst continued, “It’s a practice that's been going on for thousands of years…I was attracted to the authenticity of the minds of all these people together.” Although, Oberst didn’t quite seem to find exactly what he was looking for. "In a way, I did," he said. "It's a personal thing that's hard to articulate. I left there feeling a little more that I was on the right path, working in conjunction with the universe and against the grain." Perhaps Oberst’s reaction to the place is a good metaphor for the album. The same goes for the repeated mysticism on the album; it’s not a theme, but a metaphor.
The song “Susan Miller Rag” came as a bonus three inch CD for online orders from Saddle Creek, to be included as a part of the album at least in some way. There are three other additions to the mix. "Cartoon Blues" and "Tourist Trap" are songs that were exiled to theFour WindsEP, although they were important enough for Bright Eyes to support with its own tour. It was a hard decision to sacrifice “Stray Dog Freedom.” Although it explains the mysterious concept that was mentioned in Digital Ash in a Digital Urn’s “Gold Mine Gutted,” it didn’t serve the plot as well as the others. The last addition was an internet only track called “Endless Entertainment.”
In the wake of the success of the previous Bright Eyes albums,I'm Wide Awake, It’s Morning andDigital Ash in a Digital Urn, Oberst was dealing with popularity more than ever. His songwriting and commentary on the government and society got the finger of God laid upon him as a Bob Dylan nod. In “Clairaudients,” he pokes fun at it saying “Would you agree times have changed?” It’s followed by another Dylan scene, that of hobo wanderings in "If the Brakeman Turns My Way" where fate is determined by whichever way the brakeman switches the cars. He sings, "I tried to pass for nothing, but my dreams gave me away," in contrast to "I found out that I am really no one" on I'm Wide Awake's "At the Bottom of Everything."
"Cartoon Blues" introduces new antagonists. The "plagiary poet with dark glasses on" confronts Oberst about how he came up with the idea for "the one where the baby dies." The reference is to the early Bright Eyes song "Padriac, My Prince" fromLetting off the Happiness. Oberst is so uncomfortable with the amount of attention he's getting at this party scene that he has to "ask like a child, 'May I be excused?'" Oberst's love in "Endless Entertainment" sweetly tells him "You don't have to be no one's biography. They'll try to write you down and hope you go crazy." In "Tourist Trap," he sings "The way these strangers stand so close. They say my name like a guessing game, 'Hey, is that really you?' No, I don’t think it ever was." The song also reintroduces the emotion of not feeling at home in your home. It’s something Oberst has written about before in songs like I’m Wide Awake’s “We Are Nowhere and It’s Now.” He sings, “I’m not sure if I live here anymore.” It becomes even more complicated when abortion is a part of the equation, a puzzle piece uncovered in "Lime Tree."
As overtly expressed in "Endless Entertainment," the album is littered with references tothe apocalypse. Most notably is "Four Winds," in which Oberst uses several cleverly placed allusions to the Bible's book of revelations in order to create a severe and subtle political commentary on a particular nation's global conflicts that might bring about the end of days. The lovely nickname "Great Satan" was bestowed upon the United States by Iranian ruler Ruhollah Khomeini and the tune’s jovial, sarcastic inclusion implies criticism on both ends. Before the release of the album, Oberst said that ifI'm Wide Awake was meant to be the New York album, thenCassadaga was meant to be the America album. The lyrics span the geography of the country quite well, as in "Coat Check Dream Song" that spins the directions of the compass to foretell disasters. The song ends with some common Arabic singing, with the words "Saada Tekmel B'Lhouria Houria." Its meaning basically intertwines happiness and freedom. "Endless Entertainment" ends with a repeated Bright Eyes mantra, similar to the lines "There is no right way or wrong way, you just have to live" from "Hit the Switch" onDigital Ash. The line is "You don't have to be content, but you do have to get on with it."
Cassadagais the first Bright Eyes album where the focus ventures away from relationships. A subtle undercurrent is threaded throughout and it becomes evident that the lyrical journey and quest for identity in the lyrics is tightly tied to it. "Hot Knives" speaks of a wife and a mistress and the album battles with this indecision, which becomes indicative of the lyricist himself. One of the secret messages uncovered with the spectral decoder is “We love you Breezy, and we miss you!” She was a harpist for the band that tragically died, and Oberst's relationship with her is depicted in "Breezy," a b-side to his debut solo with The Mystic Valley Band. She gives new definition to the damage that "Great Satan" causes for the "Whore of Babylon" in "Four Winds." The wife could be a character that has been written about before, who used to wait faithfully back in Omaha as the girl fromLifted's “You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will.” The mysterious Laura is strewn all over Lifted andI'm Wide Awake. “Tourist Trap” directly recollects her and implies that something has changed with the line “There’s people here, but you are gone.”
As surmised at the end of “Endless Entertainment,” the mantra of acceptance repeats. A scene in “Susan Miller Rag” has Oberst “dividing memories” at a photo booth. He sings, “Relax your cause, relax your feelings and choose not the one that you want, but the one they just handed you.” The river a constant metaphor for this idea, mentioned in “If the Brakeman” and “Lime Tree.” So, Oberst advises himself to choose the one that the tide of chance brought to him.
It turns out that Cassadaga was also the place where Oberst quit drugs cold turkey. "Cleanse Song" mentions things like "On a detox walk through Glendale Park over sidewalk chalk, someone wrote in red: 'start over.'" It’s a song that Oberst told NME was about “taking a bath. A very long overdue bath.” In “Endless Entertainment,” Laura holds and supports Oberst after he passes out in the tub and she fears that he had died. She’s the one there through his treatment saying, "My love, my love is not the enemy." It’s a scene that gives some sort of reason for why the wife felt compelled to forgive the mistress in "Hot Knives." Laura is also present with Oberst in some manner when he awakens “reborn as a wailing infant in Krug Thep, Thailand.” It was a place Oberst went to try to get healthy. One of Oberst's biggest themes is the balance of life and death. Unfortunately, as he is reborn, his "wife gave birth to a funeral dirge."
The fruit from “Lime Tree” becomes a twist on the old biblical genesis as well as a symbol of fertility both literal and metaphorical. When Oberst bites the fruit he feels nauseous with what he calls the “thief I would have to pursue at all times, at all costs: the truth.” The idea also appears in “Cleanse Song” with “Take the fruit from the tree break the skin with your teeth. Is it bitter or sweet? All depends on your timing,” which Oberst relates to how relationships start, “like a meeting of chance with a train station glance.”
The Lime Tree is the name of a produce market that is just below his New York City apartment. The scene then becomes Oberst wandering around the city and stopping mid-step to stare at the fruit, some of which are rotten and some of which are ripe, and then being struck with an idea. Yet, it seems unclear what it is the Oberst has chosen. He needs his “old friend” because he says “I can’t sleep next to a stranger when I’m coming down.” However, the song ends with him saying “So pleased with a daydream that now living is no good.”
With the four essential additions, the new mix furthers Bright Eyes quest for identity, rounding it off with more hope than ever in "Everything Must Belong Somewhere." Instead of about being lost or about finding your way, the album is about having faith in regret and premonitions and trying to find complacency, as well as the troubles with accepting that complacency. "It's a pilgrimage record to find peace of mind," Oberst said to Lazy-I. "It's a search for contentment, which is what I'm always looking for…Until I get it, then I want out, I want chaos." So the peace is in the balance of the scale, like the scene at the end of “Lime Tree.” He’s shoeless and stumbling through the woods with a spinning compass from Lifted’s “Make War” and no one to protect him from the wolves in Fevers & Mirrors’ “Arienette.” Yet what he finally said to Lazy-I about the small Florida town of Cassadaga was, “I left with this peaceful feeling.” The last lines of “Lime Tree” are “I took off my shoes and walked into the woods. I felt lost and found with every step I took.”
A sweet little lo-fi pop duo from Brooklyn with a handful of songs that have emotionally charged vocals, interspersed with instrumentals. Cory Seigler sings of scenes that could all take place from a bed with a fluffy white blanket during the early morning, overexposed and shot with a dusty lens. They are sugary simple things like wasting the day Sleeping in, playing Nintendo, breaking up with someone in your sleep, and they even mention driving home from Worcester, MA (presumably...hopefully). They've got quite a good idea for the packaging for the EP. Each of the forty silk screened, hand pressed CDs each comes with their own unique polaroid photo.
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