I have a weird thing for Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst, the boyish songwriter considered by many to be one of the great songwriters of his/my generation. Maybe it’s because we were born only days apart. Or maybe it’s that he had a fling with Winona Ryder, who I crushed on hard in college. Or, I suppose, it could be the many, many albums he’s released over the last 14 or so years. No matter the reason, I’ve bought everything the guy has put out – on release day, no less – since the release of Fevers and Mirrors in mid-2000. Lifted, the kid’s 2002 opus, was my own Highway 61 Revisted while his I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning (probably the record he’s best known for) was, for his/my generation, a lean, mean, borderline important record that reminded both of Gram Parsons and Neil Young’s After the Goldrush. So, yeah, I dig the dude. I was a fan long before he was a punchline, while he was a punchline and continue to root for him even today, as his status as an “important young songwriter” fades beyond grey.
All that said, the guy has released some seriously iffy material, including his latest record, The People’s Key, a release that many thought was going to be a return to the quality of his middle-era material. Key starts out as all Bright Eyes albums do, with a cutesy field recording sort of intro that takes entirely too long to pass (the only time this worked for him 100 percent was on Lifted, whose intro featured Rilo Kiley driving around in a car, lost). The intro feels exhausting, full of clever science/religion/whatever ramblings about the universe, surely making many wonder why Oberst and crew felt it was something we’d need to hear over and over again each time we heard the record. It plays through like one of the stoner-friendly rants from Richard Linklater films like Slacker and Waking Life. Finally, after almost three minutes, “Firewall,” an actual song, starts up. We hear it right away – this isn’t quite the good Bright Eyes. Something happened around the time the last band record, Cassadaga was release. Oberst started singing differently, trying too hard to work outside his musical comfort zone and, most importantly, he started filtering much of the personal emotion out of his writing.
And so we have another semi-bummer Oberst-related release – an album that just doesn’t have that special power and conviction that those early albums that. That fire. The voice of a young man who really believed in what he was doing, both lyrically and musically. But yeah, The People’s Key is worth checking out regardless. Even when Oberst isn’t at the top of his game (most recently he was pretty damn great on the Monsters of Folk record), he still knows how to put together an interesting song. The record’s lead single, “Shell Games,” a much buzzed about track, is a solid listen despite sharing the overly self-conscious vibe of the whole record. The song, when just voice/guitar/atmosphere is beyond great … and then, out of almost nowhere, it turns into a big, keyboard-filled composition. Not a bad thing, per se, but a version of Bright Eyes that takes a little getting used to. Really, the more I listen the this song (and the album in general), I think of Bright Eyes pals Rilo Kiley – but without those incredible Jenny Lewis vocals.
“Jejune Stars,” despite a very rocky start, quickly becomes one of the band’s most accessible songs to date – an attribute that could probably be said about the record as a whole (an approach we can likely attribute to the boring vibe of the overlong Cassadaga). The song is a big, loud, charging rock cut that shows hints of Oberst’s trademark quiver, but without the effectiveness of, say, “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves” or “Four Winds.” Even if this record and song don’t have the shelf life of the band’s past works, I’m certain that a handful of the songs will become live show mainstays, as they sound both fun to play and, in most cases, big, full and loud.
There’s a (don’t laugh) Rastafarian theme running through the record that synchs up nicely with the cosmic pondering and spiritually enlightened lyrics. Will Oberst be embarrassed about these themes in retrospect? Oh you bet, but the theme adds a nice cohesion to the set, making it feel – as is the case with all Bright Eyes releases – like a real album. And I can’t fault the guy for shooting for the stars (pun intended). I just wish that, ya know … that he still had it in him. That he didn’t care so much about how he is perceived. I wish that, when he so famously sang “I do not read the reviews / No, I am not singing for you” at age 20, he really meant it. I wish that he had the fire in his voice instead of branded on The People’s Key album art. So much talent and ability yet, once again, an ultimately unsatisfying record full of shouldas and couldas.
73/100
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