Digital [Cr]ash, Digital [B]urn

Review: Bright Eyes, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn -- In late January, Conor Oberst's cult of personality, Bright Eyes, released two LPs at the same time. I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning garnered immediate awe from everyone with a pulse [and a secret crush; black painted fingernails], while Digital Ash in a Digital Urn was either ignored outright or juxtaposed negatively against its more analog [and accessible] sibling. So complete was the snubbing that I didn't bother buying Digital Ash until this week, when I couldn't find even one single CD I wanted. Since only Communists and hobos leave stores without consuming, I had to buy something. Pouring over rows, I'd almost given up hope when I found it there, behind Blondie.

***

Speaking of Communists, Conor Oberst is one--or at least he'd like to be. He wants drastic change without 30 million bodies in common graves and gulags and great-leaps-forward. Egality without the mess of moral purges and forced labor. A Socialist, I suppose, but not some namby-pamby healthcare-for-all moderate. He'd be Hasta-ing la revolucion siempre. But all bloodless coups this time, for God's sake. One day the capitalists will roll out of their four poster beds and Comrade Oberst will be standing in the doorway to their bedroom. Backlit. Moved, they'll hand over the keys to the great machine and the magnetic man-child will ascend the stairs of the New York Stock Exchange, to that platform where they keep the bell and gavel, and shout, "Shut . . . it . . . down . . . Forever!"

Blue collar and white, seeing the wisdom of the 25-year-old's vision, would embrace, merging into one--lighter blue--class of workman. Even the idle rich would want to get their hands dirty.

There's a name for this: Idealism. I love idealists. Truth be told, I love Conor Oberst. He hates war. Death. He wants economic parity. Justice. He wants love. Passion. He wants all of his friends to live forever. He wants them to get good, meaningful jobs. He wants innocence and to leave the world better than he found it.

Me too! How odd (I am reminded of the time an ex-girlfriend and my mother marveled that they both liked chicken).

Digital Ash in a Digital Urn doesn't present a new Conor Oberst, it shows the same guy who made I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, singing about more or less the same things, but with all these weird, artificial constraints in place. The latter's sparseness keeps Oberst's anger, frustration, sadness, and joy palpable and close to the surface, bubbling through the cracks in his voice. So fluid the lyrics, so free the verse, you wonder sometimes if he isn't just making up the words as he goes, allowing his emotion to expand and contract dynamically.

Digital Ash, though, in as much as it relies on looped snare hits and synth, hamstrings Oberst's passions as he works to jimmy his bombastic sentiments into the lull between downbeats. The effect recalls both Peter Gabriel and David Byrne, which certainly isn't bad company [or a bad sound], but the frequent starts and stops serve to accentuate his shortcomings as a songwriter. Again, these failings aren't anything new, but on I'm Wide Awake, Oberst's single greatest ally was the earnestness with which he pursued his truths. He never sounds disingenuous here but he's not charismatic either, or not nearly as persuasive.

By the time he loosens his digital fetters seven songs in, he's stretched so thin thematically that he resorts to hackneyed metaphors and cliche to fill minutes, essentially stretching six songs worth of material into twelve. On Light Pollution, he even offers a kind of political autobiography. At 25, he should hold off on the memoirs. Time Code, for its part, is the most sophomoric treatment of corporate culture I've heard since the last time I talked with my straight-edge cousin Errol, who actually is a sophomore. Ship in a Bottle, I'm pretty sure, is actually a Postal Service song. No, can't be. Not even Ben Gibbard is self-indulgent enough to sample a baby crying. Take It Easy (Love Nothing), though, featuring Gibbard's beat-mate Jimmy Tamborello, is the album's high point, a textured comprimise between compelling beats and Oberst's lyric sensibilities.

If I'm Wide Awake is an attempt to demonstrate his folk pedigree, Digital Ash shows just how much he remains an emo kid who writes protest songs. Even that, though, is significant. In a time of apolitical rock, it's he, Justin Sane, Ted Leo and a handful of others [say Jack Johnson and I'll punch you in the mouth] picking up social consciousness where Billy Bragg will eventually leave off. Thank God someone is.

I like that Bright Eyes is diversifying, fiddling with beat machines, synth, formal [sounding] meter and insane amounts of reverb. Now though, I'd like Oberst to find a way to also do that thing he usually does, which is make me cry.