Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning CD

Bright Eyes: Conor Oberst (acoustic guitar); Mike Mogis (pedal steel guitar); Tim Luntzel (bass guitar); Jesse Harris .
Personnel: Conor Oberst (vocals, guitar); Jake Bellows (vocals, harmonica); Emmylou Harris, Jim James, Andy LeMaster, Maria Taylor (vocals); Jesse Harris , Alex McManus (guitar); Mike Mogis (12-string guitar, mandolin); Nate Walcott (trumpet); Nick White (piano, Fender Rhodes piano, organ); Jason Boesel, Clark Baechle (drums).
Additional personnel: Nick Walcott (trumpet); Nick White (organ); Emmylou Harris, Jim James, Andy LeMaster.
Audio Mixer: Mike Mogis.
When writing about Conor Oberst, the singer/songwriter who records with an ever-changing group of musicians under the name Bright Eyes, it's customary to state his age within the first few sentences of the piece. It is also not uncommon to read comparisons between this Nebraskan singer/songwriter and Bob Dylan, the best-known singer/songwriter to hail from the Midwest. This serves a specific purpose -- to establish a context for Oberst's songwriting, to imply that he's some kind of "genius," not in the least for writing and recording albums at such a young age, particularly since he's been recording since the age of 13. And so many albums, too! Taking a page from the Robert Pollard handbook, he equates prolificacy with profoundness, releasing multiple records each year, sometimes under different band names. All these pop critic clichés repeated ad infinitum in the new millennium's overheated media circuit settled into conventional wisdom not long after the release of his fourth proper album, Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, in 2002. Positive reviews, all praising his ambition, endless lyrics, and apparent sincerity, flowed in and a cult started to form around Oberst. By 2004, he was nearly inescapable, appearing everywhere from The O.C. -- where Lifted was part of the Seth Cohen Starter Pack -- to representing the younger generation on Moveon.org's Vote for Change tour (which could be a reason why John Kerry couldn't motivate collegiate voters), culminating in Bright Eyes suddenly and surprisingly topping the Billboard singles charts with two singles.
All this set the stage for the release of a pair of new Bright Eyes albums in the first weeks of 2005: the acoustic-based I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and the electronic-inflected Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. The timing is no accident: big albums are rarely released in the musical graveyard of January, so Oberst had no competition for headlines this time around. He was in every magazine, from Rolling Stone to Newsweek, and the reviews were uniformly positive, trotting out all the familiar "gifted youth" and "next Dylan" boilerplate, but this time, there was a difference. Most reviews were written from the perspective that it was taken for granted that this kid sure was a genius, the next great rock & roll star. It was as if standing on-stage with Michael Stipe and Bruce Springsteen in the fall of 2004 was tantamount to Oberst inheriting their throne as rock statesmen, even if his music has little, if anything, to do with that of R.E.M. or the Boss, or for anything that could be construed as mass popular music, for that matter. Oberst comes from the post-ironic stream of indie rock, not quite emo but certainly not part of the arch, alternately ironic and bittersweet aesthetic that marked the style's heyday in the first two-thirds of the '90s. He's leapfrogged over Chris Carrabba in Dashboard Confessional to be the figurehead for how a certain strand of modern rock is judged solely on whether it's a personal emotional expression or not, never taking into account such niceties as craft, in either music or lyrics, or in the sheer impact of the music. It's a million miles removed from the sprawling narratives of Springsteen, the jangled Southern mysticism of R.E.M., or certainly, the poetry and roadhouse rock & roll of Bob Dylan, and nowhereRolling Stone (No. 966, pp.57-8) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[A] masterpiece of country-flavored heartland angst, plowing the musical ground between THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN and the Cure's SEVENTEEN SECONDS..."
Spin (p.62) - Ranked #21 in Spin's "40 Best Albums Of 2005" - "[A]n intimate folk-rock CD by a principled singer/songwriter who's working hard to keep things indie..."
Spin (pp.85-6) - "[A]n often-great set of songs about loneliness - romantic, professional, even civic." - Grade: A-
Entertainment Weekly (No. 804/805, pp.130-1) - "[O]berst retains his eye for evocative detail....the ambient alt-country arrangements lend shape to his pileup of words and music..." - Grade: B
Uncut (pp.72-3) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[B]uilt on a classic country template, and frequently dropping to an intimate hush, where Oberst's voice, and the harmonies of guest Emmylou Harris, wait to lure you in..."
Alternative Press (p.81) - 5 stars out of 5 - "A country record inspired by the city, I'M WIDE AWAKE is riddled with soft folk fantasies and acoustic ramblings..."
Magnet (p.53) - Ranked #6 in Magnet's "The 20 Best Albums Of 2005" - "Oberst's most mature, focused and consistently impressive album."
Magnet (p.88) - "[F]ull of inventive, successful ideas....By a country, city or suburban mile, WIDE AWAKE is Bright Eyes' finest hour."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.60) - Ranked #13 in Mojo's "The 50 Best Albums Of 2005" - "[A]n album of witty, intense ballads, with an electro-pop chaser..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.102) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[M]agic....Alternately thundering and hushed, exuding the warmth of human breadth, its rhapsodies present a portrait of an artist at an early height of his powers..."