Bright Eyes - Four Winds EP

I've been in possession of this EP for almost a month and until now I've hardly listened to it. It's all about Mr Oberst's sneak preview into his forthcoming "Cassadaga" album.


The title track opens with the fiddle and a nice tap your feet beat. I keep on waiting for the song to turn into Tinita Tikaram's "Good Tradition", but it hasn't happened yet. Conor's latest lament could almost be off Springsteen's recent "Seeger Session's" album.

It's a modern day protest song that could really work if it had a bit more bite and was a bit less pleasant to the ears.

"Reinvent The Wheel" is all mouth organs, pianos and strange bits of lead guitar, he's certainly taking advantage of his full new band. The song veers towards Springsteen's (again) "The River" just over halfway through, before a mad bit of strings comes in, reminding me of the shitty effects we used to have on our keyboards at school.

The next song begins almost like Leonard Cohen's "So Long Marianne" or Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", but "Smoke Without Fire" actually ends up going off a bit like "Waste of Paint" from the "Lifted..." album.

The fourth song is full of the type of lead guitar I'd expect to hear from some '70's funk album and the melody I'd expect from some Nescafe advert, before the guitar kicks in. The song namechecks a line from "Gold Mine Gutted" on the "Digital Ash In A Digital Urn" album.

The final two songs seem to be lazy to me and just fill out the EP. The final song contains a drumbeat that makes me think that the SS are marching down the street to smash my windows and drag me kicking into the night. If only they knew that I'm genuinely not Jewish, I just look it.

It all finishes with the line "I'm not sure if I live here anymore", whilst some Dick Van Dyke type chirps away in the background, maybe it should be "I'm not sure if I can write amazing songs anymore".

If this is what we have to look forward to, then I don't hold out a great deal of hope for Cassadaga. And on that note, I'm going to bundle my mother into the workings of a piano, whilst I hide in the attic for two years and compose my diaries.


And here is the video for "Four Winds", with Conor looking not unlike AJ from The Sopranos.....