Bright Eyes I’m Wide Awake It's Morning

It is telling that the intelligent reviews posted on amazon since Conor Oberst released his latest two albums are all on the Digital Ash In A Digital Urn page. It’s the progressive album of the two apparently, the departure from years' worth of beautiful acoustic ditties that if I’d been around for I might be writing about too. Fact is, I’m a new listener (where was I during his teenage years? I bet they were graceful) so I’m quite happy with this one for now and sense that it is rather a lovely album to be starting a lifelong appreciation with. In fact, its gushing amazon posts are positively heart-warming, with openings like ‘Its hard to imagine that a person who is only 24 can have so emotion.’

Well yes, he certainly has plenty of that and good on him. The album threatens to break at times if you hold on too tight – notably on pared down Lua - yet for all its delicacy it has a marvellous strength, a robust energy that acts as a seal, felt powerfully on the opening and closing tracks. Throughout it he sings about being nowhere and no one - in the grey absence that is mornings - with a zeal that spans joyous, defiant and evangelical. A desire for escape runs the length of it, with a lot of talk about walking away, but horns kick in - Land Locked Blues - drums thump, cymbals clash and guitar goes wild - Old Soul Song (For The New World Order) and the wonderful Emmy Lou Harris joins in when he is wide awake in the midst of life. At The Bottom Of Everything - the fabulous, energetic opening that is both a manuscript for living and an ode to death - is no cause for concern.

There is a lot of the priest in Conor Oberst. The epicentre of the album, penultimate Poison Oak, plays like a kind of benediction for a transvestite brother who ‘got away’. Sometime after it had stopped my heart, it sent me off to Sparklehorse looking for yellow birds. (I found some.) The swells of the record, with its military drum beats, sparky acoustic guitar and warm electric guitar and horns, are then washed right up onto the shore with a discordant tumult of sound in Road To Joy. ‘I could have been a famous singer if I had someone else’s voice, but failure’s always sounded better - let’s fuck it up boys, make some noise.’

Well then. What a glorious fuck up.

Album release date: 25/01/05
Who: Bright Eyes
Review: Jane Rich
Pitchfork review: Bright Eyes

22-20s, Nine Black Alps

After a brief mishap at the Box Office (I have a reference number, goddammit!) I'm allowed in, wondering if I should stop buying tickets and just turn up to gigs raving about my reference number from now on. Nine Black Alps are a nice warm-amp preamble to the main act but I can't say I'm taking them all too seriously just yet. In fact, that is the prevailing mood tonight. With both bands I feel slightly awkward, like I've caught them as teenagers in the bathroom, practising the songs that are going to make them famous in the mirror.

No one could be more disposed to like the 22-20s than me. Dirty blues rock 'n roll gets me more excited than any boy ever could. So, they're from Lincolnshire, but I'm prepared to overlook anything - blues is the lingua franca of the unsettled soul after all. And with riffs like the one that tears through Devil In Me, I'm longing to believe they've staggered somewhere near that crossroad. But they come out and I'm not feeling it, they play and I'm not feeling it, they pose and I'm not feeling it, and they rush Devil In Me and I'm not feeling it. In fact, it's only as we all leave that I taste a bit of that electricity we should have been getting our fix of for the last hour. And it's about where we're all going next.

It seems fitting somehow that Vauxhall Astra all but owns the best work of this band that got everyone into such a tizz. Come on boys. Get dirty. You picked the blues and if you want to pull this off, my feeling is you're gonna have to live them a little.

When: 22/01/04
Who: 22-20s, Nine Black Alps
Where: London Astoria
Review by: Jane Rich
Pitchfork reviews: 22-20s