Talent...a gift and a curse...

Connor Oberst has been the next things coming for a few years now - probably getting his first Rolling Stone mention probably ten or so years ago. At that point, he was the savant child - a fourteen-year-old band leader who had released two albums and just had to be the second coming of Bob Dylan (a very strong influence, particuarly in his phrasing and often obscure song writing).

By the time of the release of this album, Oberst had matured into a world-wise twenty-two-year old who was recording under the sobrique Bright Eyes - more a collection of studio musicians than a band with any sort of consistency. His influences are still worn very much on his sleeve - Dylan, the Beatles, maybe a bit of Tom Petty here and there, a touch of Wilco - and his voice is still the eerie cracking instrument that he leads us with. It's far from a classically trained one at that, instead it's more in the vein of Neil Young or Dylan in roughness but with a twang that he brings forward when it suits him (as it does on the ten-minute album closing "Let's Not *%&$ Ourselves").

I found the album to pretty strongly uneven - opening with one of the roughest tracks I've heard in a long while, seemingly recorded on the bus between shows and never cleaned up in the least, lacking an opening or a closing, just stopping mid-bar and drifting away in a cloud of snatched conversation. Somewhere in the middle, 'round about "Bowl of Oranges", Bright Eyes hits their stride and delivers three solid, tight songs without the rambling and affected shifts and dips that Oberst brings to the much of the rest of the album.

Oberst is clearly a talented writer and musician, a band leader with the faith to lead his troupes into every possible blind alley and odd cul de sac while they charge right along behind him, often slipping somehow out of the confusion and into a nice groove, but Oberst could benefit from passing of a bit of the lead and getting a producer to help him tighten the entire album up a bit. Ryan Adams is often mentioned in the same breath as Oberst, and they seem to be two of a feather, prolific artists who sometimes release things above and beyond what would be prudent and simply offering the world anything they feel like putting out.

Talent can be a gift and a curse...