Connor Oberst is one hard working 24-year-old. With four studio albums and more than twice as many EPs and singles under his belt already, he has returned to the spotlight again, this time releasing two albums of different material on the same day.
All this press, however, is nothing new to Oberst. Back in November he had the number one and number two singles on Billboard's singles sales chart for the songs “Lua” and “Take it Easy (Love Nothing)” respectively, an astounding feat for an indie artist.
But all sales charts and deft PR moves aside, the real reason why Oberst may in fact be so popular is the obvious reason: he just writes good songs.
The Omaha, Neb., native's folksy country rock has been compared with that of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon thousands of times over, so it is only necessary to mention those comparisons yet another time when talking about Oberst's other newly-released album.
Digital Ash In A Digital Urn sounds nothing like either of the aforementioned artists - it is a more experimental record, with lots of electronic elements and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner on electric guitar. With I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning , it is easy to see why Oberst released the two albums separately rather than trying to combine songs haphazardly from two albums that were obviously meant to be separate.
I'm Wide Awake is full of mostly mellow acoustic-based folk songs, songs that Oberst is obviously more comfortable writing as well and performing. The first track, “At The Bottom Of Everything,” begins with a spoken word anecdote from Oberst about a woman on a plane that really has nothing to do with either the rest of the song or the album. But once the song actually starts, complete with mandolin and backing vocals from Jim James of My Morning Jacket, the album picks up and hardly loses momentum throughout.
The next song, “We Are Nowhere And It's Now,” a pretty straightforward “classic” country tune, adding a bit of a twang coming from piano and trumpet as well as adding the harmony of bluegrass/country legend Emmylou Harris. Her grizzled voice adds to Oberst's hushed singing style, and it is a bit haunting to hear her singing, in unison with Oberst, “We are nowhere, and it's now / And like a ten minute dream flying in the passenger seat / while the world was flying by / I haven't got very long/ but it feels like a lifetime.”
Harris' presence on the album gives it some credibility, in places making Oberst seem older and more mature.
In turn, the songs on this record seem ageless, not only in the tracks on which Harris appears, such as “Land Locked Blues” and the aforementioned “We Are Nowhere And It Is Now,” but on the rest of the album as well.
The song “Lua,” which features solely Oberst accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, is a simple song with sparse and simple lyrics that, although not his strongest, accompany the song quite well. “Another Travelin' Song” is another pseudo-country tune, and could almost be described as “garage country,” with messy acoustic strumming from Oberst and a great rolling bass line that gives the song a highly energetic fun feeling.
Oberst, who this summer made his political ideologies clear when he toured with REM on the “Vote for Change” tour, tries to put some of his politics into his music on this album, but he does it so subtly that the songs do not feel like political rants.
Oberst mimics the lyrical content of 60s folk protest songs with his own twist in “Old Soul Song (For The New World Order),” when he sings, “We walked forty blocks / to the middle / of the place we heard that everything would be. / And there were barricades to keep us off the street. / But the crowd kept pushing foreword / ‘til they swallowed the police.”
And in “Landlocked Blues” Oberst again enlists the help of Harris in a song that on the surface seems to have no political overtones but, on closer inspection, uses metaphors to convey his distaste at the state of the world. “The world's got me dizzy again /,” Oberst sings, with Harris on backing vocals, “You'd think after twenty-two years I'd be used to the spin /…But greed is a bottomless pit. / And our freedom's a joke / we're just taking / And the whole world must watch the sad comic display / if you're free start running away / Because we're coming for you.”
Oberst seems to be maturing quickly. Sure, Oberst's voice isn't stellar and he is a sloppy guitar player, but what he lacks in musical skill he makes up for in songwriting and lyricism.
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning packs the political punch of Bob Dylan with the alt-country sensibilities of Ryan Adams and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, and it finally takes him out of the “emo” scene in which he started and puts him on his way to becoming one of the next great singer/songwriters of our generation.