Four Winds, Bright Eyes

     Conor Oberst has always set himself apart from the vast majority of the indie crowd through his willingness to be unabashedly rootsy. He does not simply dabble in, for example, country-folk, as the Shins did on “Gone for Good.” Nor does he wink slyly at the listener, as though convinced he’s emulating an idiom that’s beneath his talents. No, Oberst launches himself wholeheartedly into every style that he attempts – and, on I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, his extraordinary 2005 effort, he sounded remarkably comfortable within the folk realm. On the title track of the Four Winds EP, a delicious appetizer for next month’s full-length Cassadaga, Oberst experiments with a grittier side of Americana to create a bitterly rootsy mini-epic.

     Oberst’s navel-gazing has grown legendary, so it’s a bit unsettling to see him turning his eyes towards the wider world. His first step in this direction dates back to a brilliant song called “Napoleon’s Hat” written for a Saddle Creek benefit for Hurricane Katrina. In a series of historical profiles (turned into parables for humanity at large), Oberst mourns the wreckage of the modern world while offering a warmly hopeful message for the future. I was personally hoping that “Napoleon’s Hat” would be included on Cassadaga, but “Four Winds” is equally compelling: Oberst sings with his patented blend of joyful disgust through a four-minute road trip across the modern world. The rawness of the violin, organ, and layered guitars works hand in hand with the lyrics to mold a series of indelible images in the listener’s mind. The sound effectively evokes the idea of Oberst as a footsore traveler who is actually absorbing the sights that he sings about: “the Black Hills, the badlands, the calloused East.” (Interestingly enough, another band of bedroom poets took their innovative perspective and magnified it to a global scale on the same release date: the Arcade Fire’s sophomore record, Neon Bible, is infused with the same confusing mixture of pessimism and the joyous catharsis that only rock’n’roll can provide.)

     The rest of the songs on this EP are not thematically related to the title track; this explains their exclusion from Cassadaga, because if it were purely a matter of quality, there would be no excuse for leaving some of them off. “Reinvent the Wheel” is vintage Bright Eyes, full of rich orchestration and as melodic and heartfelt as anything Conor’s ever written. In “Smoke Without Fire,” a sleepy duet with M. Ward, he gently reproves his own tearjerking tendencies (“I won’t condone another moan/Not when everything is fine”) and in “Cartoon Blues” he pens a satirical portrait of his own image – and he does with so much gusto, only he could have pulled it off. “Stray Dog Blues” features some sublime soloing from Oberst that suggests he’s been drilling his Guitar Hero chops pretty hard lately, even if the lyrics and musical form are a little plodding. Four Winds does not cohere perfectly; nor is it intended to be a coherent musical or political statement. I do believe that it holds its own against anything in the Bright Eyes catalogue (which is astonishing, considering it’s a mere sampling of what is to come next month), mostly through the joie de vivre that is evident even in his most melodramatic moments. Bright Eyes’ sound is growing ever more organic and more joyful – and, considering what Conor is usually singing about, that is quite a feat in itself.