I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Bright Eyes
Saddle Creek Records
The Internet can be a wonderful thing. At sites like the You Tube, which allow you to freely upload and download videos to share, you sometimes come across something you would never otherwise have seen, that gives hope that the dead hand of capitalism hasn't extinguished all life from popular culture.
That is how I felt watching the footage of US singer-songwriter Conor Oberst, the main figure in the band Bright Eyes, give a solo performance of the Bright Eyes song, "When the President Talks to God" on The Late Show with Jay Leno in May 2005. The song, available as a free download from iTunes, is an impassioned and brilliant rant that slams the ruler of the "free world" and his use of religion to justify his crimes. You simply don't expect to see something so genuinely heartfelt and angry on something as stylish but empty as a US late-night talk show.
Punctuated by cries of approval from the crowd, Oberst sings "When the president talks to God/Are the conversations brief or long?/Does he ask to rape our women's rights/And send poor farm kids off to die?/Does God suggest an oil hike/When the president talks to God?", and later "When the president talks to God/I wonder which one plays the better cop/'We should find some jobs, the ghetto's broke'/'No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't/Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke'/That's what God recommends".
Oberst is only 26, but started recording at 13, and first achieved critical acclaim with Bright Eyes in 1997. Releasing his music independently on his own label, Oberst achieved the remarkable feat with Bright Eyes in 2004 of simultaneously holding the top two positions in the US charts just two weeks after releasing the songs.
One of those songs, Lua - which deals with the use of alcohol and drugs to cope with depression - features on Bright Eyes 2005 album I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. You Tube features another live performance of a song from that album, "Road to joy", on another US talk show, The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. The raucous performance, with a full band and ending somewhat surreally with the trumpet player attempting to smash his instrument, features Oberst's ability to write lyrics that combine individual alienation with social commentary.
Oberst sings about alienation from modern society: "And so I hope I don't sound too ungrateful/For what history gave modern man/a telephone to talk to strangers/machine guns and a camera lens." He places this dissatisfaction in a political context, singing: "I read the body count out of the paper, and now its written all over my face".
But Oberst also insists that this situation not just can, but will be changed, with the highlight of the performance being when a furious Oberst shouts the lines "So when you're asked to fight a war that's over nothing/it's best to join the side that's gonna win/No one is sure how all of this got started/but we're gonna make 'em god damn certain how it's gonna end!/Oh yeah we will, oh yeah we will!"
Oberst sings about the beauty of individual love, but also the beauty of mass protest. On "Old Soul Song for the New World Order", Oberst sings "We walk the forty blocks to the middle/Of the place we heard that everything would be/And there were barricades to keep us off the street/But the crowd kept pushing forward/Till they swallowed the police/Yeah, they went wild".
Given all this, it is not surprising that some have attempted to label Oberst as the "new Bob Dylan". This claim is ridiculous on most levels. It ignores the social forces that shaped Dylan and his music, and which his music then intersected with. The early years of the 21st century set a very different context, and it is obvious that Bright Eyes is a long way from achieving the sort of cultural impact that Dylan had.
However on I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, Oberst reveals the ability, like Dylan at his best, to place the struggles of the individual within the problems of broader society. We don't need any new Dylans, but the 21st century could use a lot more acts like Bright Eyes.