Cassadaga

Bright Eyes spent much of last year in the studio in Lincoln, Portland, Los Angeles, New York and Omaha working on new material which has become their 5th studio album titled 'Cassadaga', the band's most confident work so far. 'Cassadaga' is an album so full of soaring strings and female harmonies that it feels almost buoyant in comparison to previous releases.

While many latched onto the smattering of political commentary in 2005's 'I'm Wide Awake...', 'Cassadaga' is less blunt in its depiction of youthful exasperation in the Bush era. References to Hurricane Katrina, holy wars and polar ice-caps may crop up, but they're buried deep amongst the ruminations on life, love, history, death and the afterlife. If 'I’m Wide Awake...' was "the New York City album", then 'Cassadaga' is "the America album", in which Oberst diaries his travels around the country and articulates his sense of history in the landscape. In first single 'Four Winds' he is "off to old Dakota where genocide sleeps/in the Black Hills, the Badlands, the calloused East/I buried my ballast, I made my peace." 'Cassadaga' itself crops up in the same song. The town, a community for psychics in central Florida, is visited in order to "commune with the dead". This wandering spirit is crystalized in 'I Must Belong Somewhere', a song which was already a staple of live shows by the end of the 2005.

Elsewhere, 'Hot Knives' is particularly spirited, bringing to mind the true energy of a Bright Eyes show. Likewise, 'Soul Singer In A Session Band' - a rousing paean to an oxymoronic profession - enlists all of the elements which make the Bright Eyes live band such a euphoric experience. 'Make A Plan To Plan To Love Me' is Bright Eyes at their most playful; a straight-up love song, replete with girl group vocals and Burt Bacharach strings. Oberst, the fumbling guitarist whose impassioned prose tumbles out under stark stage spotlights, is still recognizable in every track, but the songs are rich with elaborate production, cinema-sized orchestration and, at times, sprawling, almost psychedelic, atmospherics.