Product Description

Fifth album from solo project of the prolific Conor Oberst,frontman with the politically-charged Desaparecidos. BrightEyes is an outlet for his more intimate, personal songs, usually played on acoustic guitar. 'Lifted...' retains the folk and Britpop influences of his earlier work, but has a fuller, more produced sound than before. Features 'From A Balance Beam' from the 'There Is No Beginning To The Story' EP.

Track Listing

1. The Big Picture
2. Method Acting
3. False Advertising
4. You Will. You ?Will.You ?Will.You?Will
5. Lover I Don’t Have To Love
6. Bowl Of Oranges
7. Don’t Know When But A Day Is Gonna Come
8. Nothing Gets Crossed out
9. Make War
10. Waste Of Paint
11. From A Balance Beam
12. Laura Laurent
13. Lets Not Shit Ourselves (To Love And To Be Loved)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8218 in Music
• Released on: 2005-01-01
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, has a reputation for being wordy, but the 14-word title of his fifth album sure takes the cake. This fresh-faced Nebraskan songwriter, you see, is keen to prove he is one of a kind. While his Bright Eyes project clearly follows in the vague lineage of leftfield rock nom de plums like Palace Brothers or Smog, where those outfits possess a kind of mystic elusiveness, Oberst has made a career of pouring forth words like a god-fearing adolescent at his first confessional. The Story Is in the Soil... is often wilfully scrappy: with studio conversations and the sound of whirring tape reels left in, often, it appears there's no such thing as an out-take in Bright Eyes' swollen musical vocabulary. But Oberst undoubtedly possesses a rare and raw talent. Straining his vocal chords like a precocious youngster mock-flexing his muscles, he tears through a canon of staggeringly deft musical arrangements that constantly veer from joyful marching anthems ("From a Balance Beam") to desolate lullabies (`False Advertising'), dragging you powerfully in their wake. It's hard to digest it all in one sitting, but if you're into indie-rock and you've not experienced Bright Eyes in full, tearful flow, you're surely missing something. --Louis Pattison

Customer Reviews

I'd give it 4 and a half
An amazing talent is hidden away in the relatively unknown band Bright Eyes. Especially when you consider the talented singers age! - currently a young 28!

it does take a while for the songs to sink in - they are not accessible in the commercial way - it is best enjoyed when you have sometime to concentrate and listen carefully - the lyrics and tunes will pull you in like a magnetic force - you feel compelled to listen to his every word, whether it be softly spoken like a lullaby, sung joyously like choral anthem or spat with spite and anger - you then become entrapped and woven in the mesh - listening over and over again - pulling the CD bookelet out to read along with the lyrics.

In a more factual way - the album and style of music is quite playful and melodic - but not in a catchy 'pop-hook'- more akin to Arcade fire style of melody - (i see one reviewer has compared the bands before and in my eyes Bright Eyes are far superior with a greater reach of melody and lyrical depth.)

It really does remind me in it approach to songwriting and overall production of Neutral Milk Hotel - it has a collection of varied instruments building a series of creshendo's and melodies. It is 'leftfield' indie music - but is certainly worth keeping with if you reckon you have an ear for good music.

Lyrically it is a treat - I can see why he has been hailed as the new Bob Dylan - it is personal with out being cryptic or metaphorical - he comments on the world around him without being too cynical or depressing.

Once you have had a few listens, it really does demand your attention, - i think it was my 3rd listen when it really sunk its teeth into me - now i cant get enough.

If you listen to this casually it will fly past you without you even noticing it and would be described as 'wishy washy' - but it is best enjoyed on your with some headphones on when you can give it some time and thought.

Some songs are upbeat - others more sombre and there is a lovely addition on one song from a softly spoken female singer too - it makes a worthwhile addition to his already good music and voice.

This is my first experience of bright eyes apart from the four winds single which i also like, and I cant wait to hear more.

For those of you who like comparisons - try putting the lyrics of Bob Dylan, the arrangements of Neutral milk Hotel, the whimsical melodies of Belle and Sebastian, the compositions of Arcade Fire and the wit and playfulness of Ben Folds in a mixer add with a touch of childhood genius like Ben Kweller and there you have it.

Oh my god
How can I have only just discovered this !!! Its a masterpiece. I feel like the guy who has just seen his first Picasso. This album is that good. I already had Wide Awake, and Cassadaga, and decided to give this a go. Words fail me, an incredible album. The best I have ever heard.

Colossal, shambolic, alt-country flavoured behemoth.
Oberst has come in for a lot of flack from most critics, which is partly understandable, given that he's the poster-boy for whinging emo-fans with pretensions at depth, moaning about his depression and outsider status, whilst simultaneously finding much success and a stream of celebrity girlfriends!! Regardless, the music here, and on the previous album Fevers and Mirrors, more than justifies Oberst's much-documented hissy-fits, as he borrows shades of the early-folk of Bob Dylan, the gloomy landscapes of Johnny Cash, the honest desolation of Will Oldham and the stark stream-of-conscious-fuelled nightmares of Jeff Mangum, to create a sprawling mish-mash of sounds, styles and lyrical ruminations that manage to cover everything from heartache to isolation, terrorism and self-doubt.

Like Fevers and Mirrors, Lifted creates a bizarre atmosphere that seems to be suggesting something epic. There are numerous lyrical references to the writing of a book, whilst the CD layout itself finds the lyrics broken down into chapters, with a contents page listing the tracks and running times and a closing thank you/credits page acting as an epilogue, which might suggest some kind of over-riding concept to tie the whole thing together, or it could just be Oberst and co. attempting to ape the mystique of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea? Regardless, the songs work well together and the album, as a whole, is well sequenced, with the band flirting backwards and forwards between reflective melancholic downers and more abrasive rants. Much of the album's success and overall opaqueness is probably down to producer/multi-instrumentalist Mike Moggis, who fills Lifted with the same kind of warm, fuzzy distortions, studio-clatter, tape effects and bizarre instrumental flourishes that made the second Bright Eyes album the joy that it was, whilst also managing to give a further sense of weight to Oberst's tortured and heavily fragmented lyrics.

The music on this album is captivating, whether presenting us with Oberst on solo acoustic guitar, or filling the room with spaghetti-western horns, marching-band rhythms, sinister organ refrains and a smattering of lush strings. As one on-line critic noted, it's very much the big-budget "widescreen" follow up to the previous album's low-key melodrama, with the band painting on a literally huge canvas, employing an army of session musicians and generally taking the lyrics even further into the realms of the American gothic. At times the album seems to lose its way - stretching to breaking point and almost descending into the worst kind of "look-at-me" pretension - but that's just part of the album and the band's overall charm!! As Oberst himself comments in the closing rant of 'Lets Not Sh*t Ourselves' - which makes clear the emotional sentiments that the band had been hinting at all along - "ambition, I have found, can lead only to failure", which sums up the overall scope of the record and the band's attitude to recording... Yes, it's overlong and occasionally overblown, but at the same time, it shows a depth and a naive beauty far beyond the ban's collective age.

Throughout the thirteen songs, Oberst, Moggis and co. push themselves to breaking point, filling their songs with a novel's worth of lyrics and a dazzling array of production effects; which range from the subtle (the background hum of the studio slowly enveloping the recording during the tense and slightly menacing Don't Know When But A Day Is Gonn'a Come), to the mysterious (the in-car conversation during the opening song, with the track itself playing in the background), to the downright barmy (Oberst sings the word 'mistake' during False Advertising, in time with one of the session players fluffing a note and the whole song comes to a halt!!). The production-style works well with the overall theme of the album and Oberst's frantic, over-emotive vocal delivery, suggesting a rough and rugged beauty... a sense of something greater in a world torn apart by anger, apathy, confusion and fear.

On Nothing Gets Crossed Out, Oberst sings about his head being a "carousel of pictures", which gives us an accurate idea of how he uses lyrics to evoke feelings and places. In the second song, Method Acting, he makes a case for those people who go through life pretending that everything's OK, when really they're falling apart. There's also a great deal of references to the September 11th attacks that took place the year before this album was released, with Oberst talking about a "shocking bit of footage" viewed on a "shitty TV screen" before urging us to squint out through the snowy static "to make out the meaning"... which could also be a key to understanding the more elusive moments of the record itself!!

The final run of songs takes us from the self-doubt of Waste Of Paint - a song that talks of the album and Oberst's prior works as "trite and cheap" - whilst From A Balance Beam is a more up-tempo number that attempts to make sense of the current climate of fear and paranoia that only seems to be escalating with each coming year. This leads us into the gently wilting ballad, Laura Laurent, a theme that seems to be continued on recent songs like Lua and Landlocked Blues, before we get to the epic thirteen-minute dénouement, Lets Not Sh*t Ourselves. Here, Oberst finalises his feelings about the world over a chaotic, alt-country, five-chord bombardment of imagery and over-blown emotion, as a bed of electric guitars, horns and a drunken choir wail away over the top of the frantically strummed acoustic melody.

Ultimately, Oberst's message, that all anybody really needs is "to love, and to be loved" is beautiful in it's naivety, and the album as a whole, although epic and shambolic in equal measures, is successful in documenting the thoughts and feelings of a twenty-something lost and confused amidst the mess going on all around them. On this album, Bright Eyes risk everything, creating an album that seems to warrant praise and ridicule in equal measures, whilst showing an enormous growth from the wayward exploration of the first two albums, towards the joy that was I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning.