Well, I haven't managed to listen to it all the way through yet, because people came to my house (grr) and it was apparently antisocial to listen to BE rather than admiring their baby...but I really like 'If the Brakeman Turns My Way', and I've loved 'No One Would Riot for Less' since I first got the bootleg a little while ago...it sounds like the apocalypse in my ears.
I don't know why, but it sounds like a record by a completely different band who are somehow the same...there's a lot less of the bleak, confessional edge that the early stuff has, and obviously they have the money for proper musicians and production and recording equipment now, and in a way their sound has totally matured, and I love what they're doing, but I love it in the way that I would love it if it was the first album of theirs I owned...I mean, maybe that's because it's the first new full-length that I've actually anticipated, since I didn't get into them until just after Digital Ash/Wide Awake were released. I don't love it like Bright Eyes, I love it like something else, and it's a love mixed with a strange sense of loss...I don't think Conor is floundering any more, he seems to know where he's going as an artist, as though all those years of growing up publicly through music have finally paid off, and whilst that's great I almost miss the angst and insecurity...Cassadaga sounds like some people's debuts do, when they haven't been recording their whole lives, despite the fact that his songs are so much more grown up, and that's lovely. But I miss the mixed-up kid.
In fact, in songwriting terms it reminds me of his work with Desaparecidos, with social commentary rather than introspection, only deeply mellow and very countrified, and since I love country and Desa, that's wonderful.
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Date: 2007-04-11 04:16 pm (UTC)I don't know why, but it sounds like a record by a completely different band who are somehow the same...there's a lot less of the bleak, confessional edge that the early stuff has, and obviously they have the money for proper musicians and production and recording equipment now, and in a way their sound has totally matured, and I love what they're doing, but I love it in the way that I would love it if it was the first album of theirs I owned...I mean, maybe that's because it's the first new full-length that I've actually anticipated, since I didn't get into them until just after Digital Ash/Wide Awake were released. I don't love it like Bright Eyes, I love it like something else, and it's a love mixed with a strange sense of loss...I don't think Conor is floundering any more, he seems to know where he's going as an artist, as though all those years of growing up publicly through music have finally paid off, and whilst that's great I almost miss the angst and insecurity...Cassadaga sounds like some people's debuts do, when they haven't been recording their whole lives, despite the fact that his songs are so much more grown up, and that's lovely. But I miss the mixed-up kid.
In fact, in songwriting terms it reminds me of his work with Desaparecidos, with social commentary rather than introspection, only deeply mellow and very countrified, and since I love country and Desa, that's wonderful.