Lifted
or
The Story is in the Soil Keep Your Ear to the Ground
Bright Eyes
Saddle Creek Records
August 12,
2002
Conor Oberst, how you’ve changed.
The 22 year old
Nebraska native who began his career singing
The sound of the hopeless kids as they scream from the basements of the houses of their parents has been
flailing Emo since the early
1990s. But on his latest double album with the band Bright Eyes, Oberst decries his artful
depression as as a
rock star pose. He swears a new
sincerity, and portrays for the first time an oscillation of tone and mood:
bitterness,
fury,
prophecy,
resignation,
fatalism,
introspection,
love, and even
joy, albiet the
manic, universal, unreasonable kind. There is no trace of his previous
iconoclasm, instead he recommends
surrender:
You can struggle in the water, be too stubborn to die / Or you can just give in, and be LIFTED to the SKY. The songwriter denounces his past image as a
martyred
suburban teenager and deliberately fades into the
camaraderie of his friends and band mates, calling upon them to reinforce the singer’s lyrical assault with boisterous
choruses, full
orchestration, and military-style
horn and
percussion sections.
Nobody
screams like Oberst does. When during the song “
Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and To Be Loved)” he berates himself and his
consumerist countrymen as
red blooded, white skinned, oh and the blues / Oh and the blues, I GOT THE BLUES, its impossible for the listener to remain unswayed by the
unfashionable anti-patriotism. On the other hand, the bittersweet “
Bowl of Oranges” uses delicate
piano,
dulcimer and
bells to create an unexpected robustness, evocative, of all things, of
Joni Mitchell’s “
Chelsea Morning”, and the
retro crooning swell of “
False Advertising” is daring and convincing. “
From a Balance Beam”, is inadvertently poetic, breathtaking in its
cynicism and simultaneous
impossible hope. In an effortless
turn of phrase, the Oberst restates the
Guy Debordian definition of the
Spectacle, coming to the
miracle-as-parasitic-
media-creation insight on its own instead of merely alluding to that author’s
writings. A
pedal steel drives the stylized
country song “
Make War”, and “
Waste of Paint” remains a solo
folk monologue. The album’s best track is its most crushing, the
cruel and coldly familiar
narrative of “
Lover I Don’t Have to Love”.
Try as it does to
embrace the ordinary, there is nothing
mediocre about
Lifted; Oberst’s singing voice remains affecting, his screams overpowering, and his lyrics fluid and chillingly sharp at their best. However, this album presents quite a new sound to an audience that may have been expecting more of the same old wintry dark-corner
loneliness. Bright Eyes’ past albums
A Collection of Songs: Recorded 1995-1997,
Letting Off the Happiness, and
Fevers & Mirrors credited one musician, six musicians, and eight musicians, respectively.
Lifted credits 22 musicians, plus a five-member drum corps, a seven-member choir, a four-member "country choir", and a “drunk choir” consisting of
everyone that was drinking at Duffy’s and O’Rourke’s that night. Lifted is without a doubt Bright Eyes’ most textured album,
mature and
subjective where all of the previous were deliberately
adolescent. Instead of an unequivocal
smug misery, Oberst uses new and diverse styles to document the contradictions of his life, bemoaning his output as “trite and cheap” while resigning himself to continue
compulsively singing, ultimately, because he cannot stop.
Tracklist
- The Big Picture
- Method Acting
- False Advertizing
- You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. You?
- Lover I Don't Have to Love
- Bowl of Oranges
- Don't Know When But a Day is Gonna Come
- Nothing Gets Crossed Out
- Make War
- Waste of Paint
- From a Balance Beam
- Laura Laurent
- Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and To Be Loved)