Customer Reviews
What Happened? 
2008-08-18
I would never call myself a huge Bright Eyes fan, but I do enjoy them. I was introduced to them in high school with the song "A Perfect Sonnet" on the Every Day and Every Night EP, leading to me downloading and purchasing several others after that. Conor's emotional and chaotic melodies made every album unique, and I love all the awkward vocalizing and experimental noise running throughout albums like Fevers and Mirrors or Lifted.
Then came the two big albums that really hit them off commercially - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Out of the two, I preferred Digital Ash as it was rawer and more of that experimental noise I loved from Conor's music, but the critics seemed to favor I'm Wide Awake moreso, which to me just sounded like a well-written country album. Don't get me wrong, it's not a dislike of the genre - it seemed more like a return to the old days when the music wasn't cheesy and hokey. There's no "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" on that album.
Cassadega - I remember hearing the single for this in my local stores and in the movie Cloverfield, the track "Four Winds." I didn't mind it, I didn't really find it to be anything special, but it wasn't a bad song and it was kinda catchy if you kept listening to it. Still, I avoided this album as nothing really drew me into it. I just received this disc in the mail free from the Pepsi Stuff bottle cap promotion going on recently, and I must say that after taking my time to listen to this album in its entirety... it's a huge letdown.
Here's what it sounds like to me: I'm Wide Awake met with great critical and commercial success, correct? Well, why not just recreate that and make it even more polished and like everything else playing on the radio these days? I was excited when the album first started and I heard all these bizarre sound clips thinking "this is leading to something really good," but not only is the pop-shine on every song a little unlike previous albums, but the song writing is just uninventive.
Most of the tracks sound like Conor wasn't even trying - like he was holding back and just started telling these stories about people he didn't care about doing things he couldn't be bothered with, and the music is just bland and repetitious. I've noticed that on Bright Eyes albums in the past, several songs will just be the same four chords over and over on loop, but at least the lyrics will be interesting and thought provoking. This album almost put me to sleep with how boring it is.
I will say that there were three songs or so that I actually did like. "Four Winds" would be one, but that's obviously the "hooker" on the album. "Lime Tree" was another that actually had some pretty good lyrics to back it's well-thought instrumentation. The third song I can't particularly remember, but then again with Bright Eyes, song titles are usually kinda trivial unless you're looking at the booklet while listening to it which at the time I wasn't. I would like to say it was "No One Would Riot For Less" but I can't be sure.
The most interesting thing I found to be on Cassadega was the cover and the decoder square. That had me even more excited when I first opened it because I hadn't really come across any inventive CD packaging like that in a while and to me it made me even feel like I had something special on my hands. It's a shame that the disc itself wasn't as unique. If this is your first entrance to the world of Bright Eyes, I highly suggest you look in the back catalog after hearing this album - my preferred album being Lifted as it captures all that I love about Conor's music with still somewhat of a pop sensability to it. If you're a big fan of I'm Wide Awake and don't know much else about the group, then you'll probably enjoy it. Maybe not as much, but moreso than I did.
Maybe me and this album just didn't click. Either way, I would not recommend it.
This album haunted me...literally 
2008-06-10
Everything about this album is and was true to form: desperate, disillusioned, violent, heartful and heartless. Spines wind on every track as he pours poison over ice and serves it with a dead man's smile and an umbrella on top. I can no longer bear to listen to this record for personal reasons, but I don't regret buying it. Anyone willing to bear witness to the stonings on this record will enjoy the old-fashioned shake-up; pedal steel grips this album in its emotional climax on "No One Would Riot for Less", no less at home than the symphonic cacophany that prologues this riveting album. As Conor Oberst cracks the sternums of religion, government and "war hawks", he does not spare his own. He opens himself on this album as he has on records before, but his vigor compresses a visceral and devastating impact. Behind the ranting and cracking of death rattles, the broken brilliance of Coner Oberst retains a bit of a quiet young man who still hasn't completely convinced himself that "he must belong somewhere."
Worth it for "Brakeman" Alone 
2008-04-18
If you really listen to this album, it's still Bright Eyes, it's still Conor Oberst, just polished to a high luster. The combination of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Wolcott is just magic. The entire collection is worth it just for the song "If the Brakeman Turns My Way". I will admit the beginning of the album is better than the ending, when the songs got kind of dark, but hey, it's Bright Eyes! It's still the same music, just showing more maturity and finesse, and in my eyes rates in his top 3 works--Lifted, Wide Awake and Cassadaga. You'll always get a surprise from Bright Eyes (think Digital Ash).
Mediocre. Descent from previous albums 
2008-01-28
Bright Eyes are known for strong lyrics and experimental music. This album accomplishes little of both.
The lyrics aren't quite as strong as ones found in previous albums (Wide Awake, Digital Ash, The Story is in the Soil). There are a few strong songs lyrically, but somes songs have the "rhyme forcing effect".
It's not very strong musically either, as a lot of the songs drag and seem to be using the same melody. Throughout listening to the album I kept waiting for the songs to reach "Bright Eyes quality", and felt somewhat let down.
Buy the album if you don't mind paying the price of 13 songs for 4 or so worthy songs.
bright eyes latest and greatest 2008-01-25
Bright Eyes never disappointments me, however I wouldn't say this is Conor Oberst's best album. Oberst has employed other musicians in this album making it even better with some female vocalists and others. The sounds and lyrics are as usual, amazing.
An Old Soul 2007-12-10
Once tagged "rock's boy genius" by the music press, Conor Oberst turns 27 on February 15th and even without that in mind it's hard to listen to Cassadaga without hearing a newfound sophistication to the Bright Eyes sound. Producer, multi-instrumentalist and permanent band member Mike Mogis has crafted a swirling, euphonious record, at times bursting with bombastic confidence and country swagger, and at others loose-limbed and mesmeric. Trumpet and piano player Nate Walcott, a Bright Eyes player since 2003 and now the third permanent member, is responsible for the cinematic string arrangements. Other than a handful of live appearances and the release of a collection of B-sides & rarities, Bright Eyes kept mostly out of sight in 2006 after the busy 2005 which saw the simultaneous release of the sister albums Digital Ash In A Digital Urn and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. Should you have looked for them you'd have found them tucked away in various studios around the country. Recording for the first time outside of the Lincoln, NE studio belonging to Mogis, the Bright Eyes cast of players were busy in studios in Portland, OR, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. The result is the band's most confident work so far, an album so full of soaring strings and female harmonies that it feels almost buoyant in comparison to previous releases. While many latched onto the smattering of political commentary in 2005's I'm Wide Awake..., Cassadaga is less blunt in its depiction of youthful exasperation in the Bush era. References to Hurricane Katrina, holy wars and polar ice-caps may crop up, but they're buried deep amongst the ruminations on life, love, history, death and the afterlife. If I'm Wide Awake... was "the New York City album", then Cassadaga is "the America album", in which Oberst diaries his travels around the country and articulates his sense of history in the landscape. In first single "Four Winds" he is "off to old Dakota where genocide sleeps/in the Black Hills, the Badlands, the calloused East/I buried my ballast, I made my peace." Cassadaga itself crops up in the same song. The town, a community for psychics in central Florida, is visited in order to "commune with the dead". This wandering spirit is crystalized in "I Must Belong Somewhere" a song which was already a staple of live shows by the end of the 2005. "Hot Knives" is particularly spirited, bringing to mind the true energy of a Bright Eyes show. Likewise, "Soul Singer In A Session Band" - a rousing paean to an oxymoronic profession - enlists all of the elements which make the Bright Eyes live band such a euphoric experience. "Make A Plan To Plan To Love Me" is Bright Eyes at their most playful; a straight-up love song, replete with girl group vocals and Burt Bacharach strings. Oberst, the fumbling guitarist whose impassioned prose tumbles out under stark stage spotlights, is still recognizable in every track, but the songs are rich with elaborate production, cinema-sized orchestration and, at times, sprawling, almost psychedelic, atmospherics. The line up of Bright Eyes players includes Andy Lemaster (Now It's Overhead), Ben Kweller, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Janet Weiss (ex-Sleater Kinney), Jason Boesel (Rilo Kiley), John McEntire (Tortoise) M.Ward, Maria Taylor and Rachael Yamagata.
3-1/2 stars -- Bright and quizzical eyes 2007-11-01
First off, some people (myself included) probably thought that Bright Eyes is only one musician instead of a full band, considering that when they're booked to play on late-night talk shows, it's usually frontman Conor Oberst playing by himself. Anyway, they seemed to be a controversial collective of sorts when their album I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning was released, because on it they took a very political and conservative stance on a lot of issues; still, I thought it was a very good album. Their latest album Cassadaga is also pretty good, but it isn't quite as accessible (more on that later).
There aren't that many political songs this time around -- in fact, there aren't ANY, but there are a few serious songs worth listening to like "If the Brakeman Turns My Way" and the album's opener, "Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)" (although on the latter, that spoken word intro really just takes up time). Other notables include "Lime Tree" and "Make a Plan to Love Me". And "Classic Cars" seems to be a metaphor of sorts, but whatever the case, it's passable.
But some of the rest of the songs don't do it for me. I couldn't get into "Soul Singer in a Session Band" or "No One Would Riot for Less", and "Hot Knives" is a little TOO dark. And "Coat Check Dream Song" makes no sense. This is still a good album, but you might want to listen to Bright Eyes' older material first before deciding if you want to take a trip to Cassadaga.
Anthony Rupert
Cassadaga 2007-10-29
Cassadaga! This Bright Eyes album is amazing in it's own unique way. Cassadaga has a cleaner sound than Conor's other albums, and it is more instrumental like the album Lifted.
Recorded With Concern, and a Peaceful Restlesness 2007-10-16
Among lyricists, Conor Oberst is in a class of his own, in his ability to distill a wide range of human experiences into poignant lyrics that manage to characterize the very essence of struggle. Cassadega is a record that showcases the bright side of angst, meaning concern. And great is Oberst's concern, in this record, for the welfare of just about everyone: those who love, those who cannot understand why they are not loved, those who pray, those who would like to pray, but cannot bring themselves to believe in the existence of any entity worth praying to. In the song Lime Tree, Conor Sings, "Everything gets smaller now, the further that I go / Toward the mouth and the reunion of the known and the unknown. / Consider yourself lucky, if you think of it as home," questioning the fruitfulness of introspection for perhaps the first time in Folk Music since early Jackson Browne. Conor's new live-performance image as a southern cult leader is hard to villainize, after listening to this prophetic record.
Perhaps the best song on Cassadega is "Hot Knives," an all-too-revealing tour through the psyche of a woman with a complete inability to evaluate the elements of her life from a truly individualistic ego, instead subscribing to various brands of sophistic nonsense. In this song, we see angst working on the side of good, which perhaps could be the most accurate theme to attribute to the entire album. Cassadaga's weak songs, specifically the lyrically-thin "Make a Plan to Love Me," and the necrotically somber faux-gothic "No One Would Riot For Less," would be the best songs on the albums of lesser bands, and its best songs, such as "Hot Knives," and "If The Brakeman Turns My Way" are positively transcendent. One caveat is that many of these songs may depress the listener, by conveying the feelings of homelessness explicated in "Soul Singer..." This music is more of an exercise in breadcrumb-following than foundation-digging. But it beats the hell out of all the breadcrumb-scrambling going on in mainstream music!
dealing with death and destruction 2007-09-19
after bright eyes' last release, the two-album set "i'm wide awake it's morning" and "digital ash in a digital urn," it became a possibility in my mind that conor oberst would not end up suffering the same fate as elliott smith, nick drake, and the rest of my favorite folk artists. "cassadaga" confirms that possibility for me. the album truly functions as a whole but each individual track is a journey on its own, especially "lime tree," a visionary soundscape hinting at liberation that came to oberst in a dream. the record by and large has a theme of spirituality and acceptance, seen clearly in "if the brakeman turns my way," a song "about hobos jumping trains" according to oberst, who explains the metaphor in terms of embracing fate. religious overtones throughout the record are best summed up with an excerpt from the lyrics to the single, "four winds," for which there is also an ep with four other new songs: "the bible's blind, the torah's deaf, the koran is mute; if you burn them all together you get close to the truth." it seems that conor oberst has broken his attachment to arrienette, a perhaps-imaginary love interest whose name means "refuge," and channeled the energy into a search for a liberation he personifies as a new, unnamed woman in "hot knives" and especially "classic cars." of all the artists i've felt close to simply through their music, bright eyes stands out after this release. through their entire discography i see a depressed, destructive youth mature into a secure, aware seeker trying to choose life.
