A poet with the best delivery I have ever seen. Enjoy!
"What a bad film."
This reminds me watch Deal or no Deal on the 13th and 15th of May, you may see a familiar face...
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Bright Eyes – The People’s Key
Four years since Cassadaga, Conor Oberst returns to Bright Eyes for their tenth studio album - heavily suggested to be the last we’ll hear from the band that first brought him into the public eye. He’s been hailed as the poet of the post-emo generation and the Dylan of the noughties as well as being named song writer of the year 2008 by Rolling Stone magazine.
Oberst has spent the last four years focusing on his side projects; The Mystic Valley Band and Monsters of Folk.
With ‘The People’s Key’, Oberst has released an album that on the surface will sound familiar to any Bright Eyes fan. His pain-drenched warble never fails to give all his songs just the right amount of melancholy and the radio samples give the feel of a multi-media art installation, something more than just a rock album. But it seems just another album was not what Oberst wanted to go out on, if this is indeed goodbye; there is a definite change in style, a lean towards electro with the introduction of synth and kraftwerk-esque keyboard. The question is does this improve the sound that we had become so comfortable with?
Although the album lacks some of the subtlety of earlier albums; Fever & Mirrors and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn to name a couple, one thing you can expect from Oberst is the unexpected. He is consistently unpredictable. To be honest I’m surprised he didn’t release an acapella album or a purely instrumental album – surely that would have been a more apt sign-off for this discriminatingly arty band.
The album has an eclectic feel; there are highs and lows: ‘Triple Spiral’ – a festival of exuberance and energy is followed immediately by ‘Beginner’s Mind’ starting out downtrodden and building to an emotive crescendo on Oberst’s fight against his own pessimism; “The sun is so clichéd, just like love and pain”. The diversity is something that makes this album worth listening to, but it also means it lacks the strength of identity of previous albums. ‘I’m Wide Awake, it’s Morning’ is such an emotive album because the theme throughout is loneliness, it makes listening to the album a journey. Similarly with ‘Fever & Mirrors’ the theme of madness and self examination captures you from beginning to end. With no obvious central theme (just a few loose references to Rastafarianism and 'Oneness') ‘The People’s Key’ doesn’t allow itself to become as affecting as previous albums.
Though there is very little fundamentally wrong with the album it has left me unsatisfied. It has some very memorable songs; ‘Jejune Stars’ and ‘Beginner’s Mind’ are the two that stick out for me, but as a finale I was expecting fireworks and ended up getting ‘Firewall’. A song about a bloke chatting about pomegranates and reptilian humanoids, and a message of timeless wisdom “When there is total enlightenment there will be peace,” delicately thrown in at the end to remind us what a thoughtful and brilliant mind Oberst is. Interpret as you will.
Here is the album in full, accompanied by a video of Conor and the rest of the band wandering around his livingroom.
Oberst has spent the last four years focusing on his side projects; The Mystic Valley Band and Monsters of Folk.
With ‘The People’s Key’, Oberst has released an album that on the surface will sound familiar to any Bright Eyes fan. His pain-drenched warble never fails to give all his songs just the right amount of melancholy and the radio samples give the feel of a multi-media art installation, something more than just a rock album. But it seems just another album was not what Oberst wanted to go out on, if this is indeed goodbye; there is a definite change in style, a lean towards electro with the introduction of synth and kraftwerk-esque keyboard. The question is does this improve the sound that we had become so comfortable with?
Although the album lacks some of the subtlety of earlier albums; Fever & Mirrors and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn to name a couple, one thing you can expect from Oberst is the unexpected. He is consistently unpredictable. To be honest I’m surprised he didn’t release an acapella album or a purely instrumental album – surely that would have been a more apt sign-off for this discriminatingly arty band.
The album has an eclectic feel; there are highs and lows: ‘Triple Spiral’ – a festival of exuberance and energy is followed immediately by ‘Beginner’s Mind’ starting out downtrodden and building to an emotive crescendo on Oberst’s fight against his own pessimism; “The sun is so clichéd, just like love and pain”. The diversity is something that makes this album worth listening to, but it also means it lacks the strength of identity of previous albums. ‘I’m Wide Awake, it’s Morning’ is such an emotive album because the theme throughout is loneliness, it makes listening to the album a journey. Similarly with ‘Fever & Mirrors’ the theme of madness and self examination captures you from beginning to end. With no obvious central theme (just a few loose references to Rastafarianism and 'Oneness') ‘The People’s Key’ doesn’t allow itself to become as affecting as previous albums.
Though there is very little fundamentally wrong with the album it has left me unsatisfied. It has some very memorable songs; ‘Jejune Stars’ and ‘Beginner’s Mind’ are the two that stick out for me, but as a finale I was expecting fireworks and ended up getting ‘Firewall’. A song about a bloke chatting about pomegranates and reptilian humanoids, and a message of timeless wisdom “When there is total enlightenment there will be peace,” delicately thrown in at the end to remind us what a thoughtful and brilliant mind Oberst is. Interpret as you will.
Here is the album in full, accompanied by a video of Conor and the rest of the band wandering around his livingroom.
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