Bright Eyes
I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (Saddle Creek)
Bright Eyes
Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (Saddle Creek)
Bob Dylan’s recently painted masterpiece (Chronicles) means that once again all pink-cheeked young musical poets must be measured up against the door frame of his songcraft. Having gone to the head of his generational class (Rhett Miller, Ryan Adams, etc.) on 2002’s masterful Lifted or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, kid Bright Eyes, 24-year-old Conor Oberst, has stalled its follow-up for excellent reason: a pronounced dearth of similar passion. Don’t let the dual album release shell game shift your gaze off that bottom line. Oberst’s opens I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning with Dylan-esque glee, “At the Bottom of Everything.” It’s no “The Times They Are A-Changin'” or even Oberst’s own “Don’t Know When but a Day Is Gonna Come,” but it blows windy with the Omaha wunderkind’s freewheelin’ indie folk exuberance. As does “Another Travelin’ Song,” whose title betrays both discs’ lyrical shortcomings. Lifted‘s orchestral anguish has ramped down and revealed a too-mortal slacker romantic more conventional than compelling. Moments, ideas, turns of phrase are jumbled together, good and bad, resulting in the sweet smell of garbage (“Landlocked Blues”). The stark simplicity of “Lua,” sequenced well alongside a pair of easygoing romancers, “Train Under Water” and “First Day of My Life,” is undercut by Oberst’s never-wavering relational narcissism. Overwrought “Old Soul Song” and closer “Road to Joy” can’t mask substandard songwriting with vocal, and in the case of the latter, musical hysterics. Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, meanwhile, is exhibit A in be careful what you title your album. The debris of opener “Time Code” sets the tone; digital garnishment works for Wilco, but not so much for the beat-impaired Oberst (“Arc of Time”). “Down in a Rabbit Hole,” with its Zeppelin beat and Blade Runner bling, begs to be heard in demo form, while the chains and gurgles of “Take It Easy (Love Nothing)” can’t hide an obvious B-side. Halfway through, with the relatively straight “Hit the Switch,” the digital sheen begins to peel and Ash starts coming into focus somewhat. “I Believe in Symmetry” marches convincingly, as does its tuned-down backside, “Devil in the Details.” That’s, of course, when the material takes another downturn: trite, indie piano bar shriller “Ship in a Bottle.” You can almost hear Billy Joel hamming up “Light Pollution.” Machines and song are in harmony on closer “Easy/Lucky/Free,” but that’s not going to salvage this mess. Granted, there’s a single disc 3½-star-LP somewhere between Awake and Ash, but that’s up to you, baby blue. (Bright Eyes packs La Zona Rosa Feb. 8.)
(Awake) 
(Digital Ash) 
This article appears in January 28 • 2005.
