Review Summary: but you, but you, you write such pretty words
When you're walking down the street and a stranger smiles at you, does it mean anything? Here's someone that you've never seen before and will most likely never see again, flashing their teeth at you in a smile that may even reach their eyes. It
shouldn't mean anything, but it's heartwarming in the sense that it's unnecessary and unrequited, and although you might not remember what the stranger looks like the next day, you still
feel it and because of that, it means everything.
Lifted or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground is sort of like that.
Choosing the best Bright Eyes album is a difficult matter. First of all, most of the material is great, and second of all, most of it sounds different. Conor Oberst is one of the few artists who has released an album for everyone; it doesn't really matter what you listen to, you can more than likely find a Bright Eyes album that you enjoy to some degree. Whether you're into the more straightforward folk of his first albums, or the lyrical honesty of
I'm Wide Awake..., or the predominantly electronic
Digital Ash..., or the Western feel of
Cassadaga, there's a Bright Eyes album for everyone. The best of the bunch, however, is 2002's
Lifted.... A somewhat daunting album that clocks in at an hour and thirteen minutes long, it has more of a "musical journey" feel than other Bright Eyes records, due in no small part to the placement of the two longest tracks as its bookends.
Although he simplified things somewhat with the follow-up album
I'm Wide Awake...,
Lifted... sees Oberst adding layer after layer to his songs, but never to the point of excess. He certainly isn't afraid to add unpleasant and sometimes even unsettling sounds into his songs; the end of "Let's Not Sh
it Ourselves," the beginning of "The Big Picture," and the beginning of "From a Balance Beam" all contain disturbing samples and ambiance. This is a very dark album for Bright Eyes; while Oberst has never sugarcoated his sound, there was always a fairly pleasant vibe to his songs but this album has some of the darkest folk songs ever written. "Lover I Don't Have to Love" has a decidedly menacing and calculating mood, with a keyboard line that brings to mind a lullaby, and the string section in the chorus accentuates the minor key of the song even further. The bridge turns a complete 180 mood-wise, as every instrument drops out except for the keyboard and the drums, and Oberst's vocal delivery is fragile and touching, before the song reaches its soaring strings-dominated climax. "Don't Know When but a Day is Gonna Come" is without a doubt Oberst's darkest song, and it contains the most satisfying climax on the album, with choir-style backing vocals and discordant piano playing.
Lifted... shows that Oberst isn't just another folk singer; he is also a master of creating a slew of different moods in his songs.
It's not all melancholy though. "You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will." and "Make War" are hopeful, cheerful ventures with Oberst's trademark simple yet catchy progressions and honest vocals. This is Conor's most interesting album lyrically, and the one that requires the most attention from the listener. Before moving toward a more blunt and forward writing style on his later albums, Oberst made heavy use of metaphors and interesting imagery while still retaining his honesty. Opening song "The Big Picture" has some of Conor's best one-liners, such as, "You can try and live in darkness but you will never shake the light/It will greet you every morning/and it will make you more aware with its absence at night," and my personal favorite, "So you can struggle in the water and be too stubborn to die, or you could just let go and be lifted to the sky." The topics are standard for Oberst - girls, politics, his own personal thoughts - but he was never able to pack so much lyrical variety within those subjects into any of his other albums as he did with
Lifted.... The variety coupled with the fact that his writing style is more oblique than usual makes the album worthy of repeated careful listening.
So what is it that makes
Lifted... the best Bright Eyes album? It has a certain sense of intangibility about it, a sort of ethereal nature that other Bright Eyes albums don't have. The songs seem to, at first, go through one ear and out the other - although that doesn't necessarily mean that you forget them after you listen, just that they leave you with a feeling that is, initially, undefinable. As more and more attention is given to the album as a whole, you can begin to identify that feeling, and if you expect me to tell you what it is...
Well, then you're just missing the point.
