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The new release by Bright Eyes is a full dinner plate. Cassadaga documents a collection of songs that address the uncertain times that face many of us who will inherit a world falling apart. Tracks on Cassadaga either provide fragments of narrative moments or reflective considerations. Each track is flushed with a sense that lead singer Coner Oberst is trying to sort out choices made around him, and the passage of time in a world where “all reality twists” ("Soul Singer In A Session Band").
Cassadaga has a country folk sound that sometimes tips a hat to singer and song writer influences from a time past. The disconcerting “No One Would Riot for Less” is a love song on the level of the great Leonard Cohen, and also a folksy political commentary that would make Bob Dylan proud. Oberst’s reflections on today’s world are grim but he looks for comfort in the one he loves, and sings with tenderness, “From the madness of the governments / To the vengeance of the sea / Everything is eclipsed / By the shape of destiny/ So love me now/ Hell is coming”.
The album leaves the listener considering ideas charged with political, social, and religious consequence. The song “Coat Check Dream Song” sounds like it was written through free association. The stream of conscious lyrics and sounds ends thoughtfully with a man singing “Saada Tekmel B'Lhouria. Houria” which is Arabic and translates to something like "There can’t be Happiness without Freedom". Perhaps the dream-like structure of the lyrics and music of this song, coupled with an obviously political final line, points to the notion that freedom from the war may only be found in the freedom of dreams.
The upbeat and positive “I Must Belong Somewhere” is a fitting song to be placed near the end of this rather reflective and disquieting album. Just when it seems that Oberst is calling for change in religion, government, and human relationships to everything, the lyrics reassure “Everything it must belong somewhere / A train off in the distance, bicycle chained to the stairs. / Everything it must belong somewhere / I know that now, that is why I'm staying here”. Interestingly, with a clever weave the album both causes the listener to associate with the ideas that the lyrics tackle and then provides “a place to level out” (If the Brakeman Turns My Way). Essentially, the listener that participates may find an interesting exchange of emotion designed to mirror the emotion that Oberst describes in his lyrics.
Cassadaga by Bright Eyes is a great album with folksy sounds packed with country and indie rock riffs. In addition, Cassadaga's lyrics make it an important album, with unabashed ideas about the social and political status of our country in the world. Those indie purists who are disappointed by the polished sound and miss the old sound from the days of “Fevers and Mirrors” have missed the point entirely. Cassadaga's accessible and tame sound perfectly juxtapose its political and emotional discontent. The album is about the “known and the unkown”, about “how it is not how it was”. PR
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