Conor Oberst seems constantly drawn to and repelled by songwriting as a means of truth-telling, a fascination that often borders on despair: “If I could just act like this was my real life and not the cage I’m in/I could tell you the truth like I used to and not be afraid of sounding fake,” he sang on his 2002 album False Advertisting. Lifted, or The story is in the soil, listen to the ground It’s a perfect expression of Bright Eyes’ lo-fi grandiosity. Over 20 years later, “Real Feel 105°” is a highlight of their new album. 5 dice, all 3sWe find Oberst resigned and withdrawn: “There’s so much to unravel to get to the truth/I just thought things I just couldn’t say,” a reminder that while he may be a songwriter who’s free with words, he doesn’t always have the clarity or talent to organize them. So the band’s new album, like so many of their predecessors, seems glittering at its brightest, honest even when the truth seems just out of reach.
And as he gets older, Oberst realizes that time seems to slip away more and more: “Time is a strange thing. Sometimes it feels like something happened yesterday, and other times it feels like something didn’t happen in my lifetime, or that someone else experienced it,” he says. said In a recent interview, he said that each new song exists in dialogue with the band’s catalogue, as if it was written the day before or never existed. Musically, it echoes Bright Eyes’ 2020 LP, In the weeds, where the world once was They acknowledged that they drew on elements from across their discography, but there were also hints of this in the lyrics. On “Nothing Gets Crossed Out,” lift“These changes are so scary,” Oberst confessed, and on his first album since 2011, he countered that feeling with lyrics like, “You have to change like your life depends on it” and “I’m not afraid of the future.”
The dominant emotion is 5 dice, 3 total Hatred is not so much fear, but all forms of hatred: stubborn, primitive, selfish, antisocial. In fact, the song “Hate” begins with a polemic against religion and ends with AI threatening the art of language, but in between, the singer sneaks in some irony about his profession and what’s going on. “Every fleeting thought becomes another outlaw song/One hand a smoking gun and bullets for innocent people.” (“What I couldn’t say” becomes “What I fought with a song.”) The following “Real Feel 105°” adds another to the list. “I hate the moon, but I don’t mind taking it from you/I want everything you give me,” he sings, and it’s enough to charm the fans. Wondering Who knows if there will ever be another Better Oblivion Community Centre album (that one is one shocker after another). The whole album may be wrapped up in the “whistle at work” spirit of the upbeat lead single “Bells and Whistles,” but when “Bath Jan Adder” turns Charles Dickens’ famous opening lyrics into a chorus: A Tale of Two Citiesthe result will inevitably be “it was the worst.”
Oberst doesn’t say he wants to escape the agony of death, but he does wonder aloud, “Why am I still alive?”, concluding in the next song, “We’re all going to die one day/Why do I succumb to this little suicide?” His lyrics flow freely and self-consciously, eschewing cliché while indulging in personal frustrations and surreal associations, whether they’re cringing or celebrating. The album’s most anthemic is the closing track, “Tin Soldier Boy,” which is also, of course, its most pessimistic. But Oberst isn’t taking any joy in these cataclysmic situations, accusing Elon Musk and himself of “preying on me.” Exclusion The platform formally known as Twitter.
Despite their internal turmoil and despair, Bright Eyes have rarely sounded more vibrant and focused. I rolled five dice and got all 3s. Oberst, multi-instrumentalist and producer Mike Mogis, and keyboardist and arranger Nate Walcott favor a loose spontaneity that was missing on their previous album. From the raucous folk-punk of “Rainbow Overpass,” featuring So So Gross’ Alex Levin (aka Alex Orange Drink), to the devastating ballad “Time I Have Left” with The National’s Matt Berninger, they bounce back after every emotional collapse. But they also pepper the LP with a series of creative embellishments. When Oberst, who also hates “protest singers staring at me in the mirror,” sings “And the orchestra/plays a cartoonish score for war” on “Trains Still Run on Time,” another social critique, the band responds accordingly. Distortion screeches when talk of stadiums comes up, distortion comes as helicopters spin. And drums slickly rumble on “All Threes,” a surprisingly jazzy collaboration with Cat Power.
The album’s title is a reference to a dice game, which is also one of the album’s two main setting the other being the 1954 Frank Sinatra film suddenlyis sampled in the album’s most devastating moment. A line about emotional indifference is inserted during the cacophony of “Spun Out’s” climax, but the following fragment strikes a deeper chord, with violent decontextualization: “I dreamed sometimes of crowds,” Sinatra says. “I saw faces scratching and pushing and biting. And when the fog cleared, somehow those faces were all me. All me. And all nothing.” Screens, quotes, mirrors – anything that shows us our own reflection – may be the closest we have to a truth that reverberates in silence. 5 dice, all 3s Leaves are left behind.
Source: Our Culture – ourculturemag.com
