As 2005 was just waking up, the Omaha based Bright Eyes simultaneously released two albums: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. This isn’t a double album with a collection of twenty or so songs, but two unique pieces that are inextricable from one another. Awake is a tight, well focused analog folk record and Ash is a more experimental digital and electric album. The connections between the albums go much deeper than the realization that the same beach blanket lyric is in ‘First Day of My Life’ and ‘Take it Easy (Love Nothing).’ The records are compliments and foils, one not complete without its opposite.
The most intriguing thing about Bright Eyes has always been the lyrical mastery of self-reference, supernatural self-awareness, self-deprecation and even self-obsession. Through the prism that is Conor Oberst, a listener who pays close attention to the words will better understand the full spectrum of his human experience. This ranges from small feelings of emotional disparity in relationships to the overwhelming distress about the purpose of existence.
One of the most fascinating things about Bright Eyes is the progression throughout the albums of the “narrator’s” character and his interactions with fictitious loves, including the all too real Laura. It seems as if, since Conor began writing, he began telling a story and each album is another chapter. There is one theme that is a constant undercurrent behind Conor’s pen. In the song ‘Milk Thistle’ from his first solo record, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Mr. Oberst wrote the line, “I keep death on my mind like a heavy crown.”
