for the record Bright Eyes' Cassadaga

Author: Melissa Marshall

"From the roof of a friend's I watched an empire ending," quakes Conor Oberst's voice with a sense of foreshadowing on the April release, Cassadaga. As the driving force of Bright Eyes, Oberst's wavering vocals have transcended the confines of pop culture to become the voice of God for many a rubber-braceleted, pseudo-existential My Space poets. Perhaps this ever multiplying generation of emo-children relates to his notoriously rebellious high school years or the sense of isolation which permeates his songs. Or maybe it's just the choppy haircut that the chronically misunderstood find so attractive. But Nebraska's claim to fame seems to have outgrown his reluctant status of emo posterchild with Bright Eyes' latest endeavor. The seventh full-length album from the three-man outfit continues where I'm Wide Awake and It's Morning left off, cultivating a more defined country twang and folk sensibility that was first introduced to fans in the opening chords of "At the Bottom of Everything."

In 2005, Oberst shocked and impressed critics and colleagues alike with the simultaneous release of Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and I'm Wide and It's Morning. Juxtaposing the two distinct and very different sounds of electronica and folk respectively, the prolific front man seemed to create his own crossroads. Two career paths laid before him: the sterile city streets dappled with the temptation of mind-alteration and dark ladies, and the winding dirt roads of spiritual awakening and political leanings. Although traces of Fevers and Mirrors' philosophy can still be heard on "If the Brakeman Turns My Way" and the closer "Lime Tree," Oberst points the steering wheel West back to his roots on Cassadaga - an album that would play as comfortably in an worn pick-up truck as it would in a Lower East Side coffee shop.

Hailed by Paste Magazine as the 67th greatest living songwriter with an ability to create songs that are "seismographs charting both the tiny and vast rumblings of his soul-searching generation," Oberst does not disappoint with Cassadaga. Whether it's the toe-tapping, lightening fiddle of "Four Winds" or the sweeping orchestration of "No One Would Riot for Less," the record plays like a road trip across the heartland of America with Oberst as our jean-clad, modern Virgil. And although it's apparent on tracks such as "Coat Check Dream Song" and "Clairaudients" that he does not agree with some of the close-mindedness or blind patriotism often attributed to that part of the country, he focuses more on the glaring humanity found there. On "Middleman," arguably the best cut from the album, Oberst quavers, "The dead can hide beneath the ground and the birds can always fly/But the rest of us do what we must in constant compromise" - a line that seems to simultaneously offer an apology as well as an excuse for our actions.

Even though Bright Eyes' ringleader has not outgrown his feverish warble, he has aged lifetimes through the booklets of his albums. And while Cassadaga may be a shock to fans that fell in love with the discontented boy of Letting off the Happiness, most listeners will appreciate the weary melodies of a man whose soles miss the soil of his roots. The record may not necessarily sound like the Bright Eyes the industry's used to, but as you wander among the tracks with the familiar out-of-pitch narration as your guide, the ending line of "Lime Tree" gains new meaning. Although he may seem lost among the complex layering of Cassadaga, Conor Oberst finds a more developed version of himself with every step he takes.