After yesterdays rambling bloggness it should be apparent that my head is not exactly...something. Its not something. Thats brilliant. It covers whatever point i am trying to make though. Clear enough for you all?
This is why it is so nice to have a collection of music that reflects and illuminates the fog of feeling and logic that swirls around me, particularly right now when i am experiencing a mild coffee induced anxiety attack - which inspires its own set of memories that are pleasant and unpleasant revolving around past anxiety attacks of mine and others and how they have felt, how they have been dealt with etc.
The music i have recently chosen is Bright Eyes "Lifted..." Unlike one past Bright Eyes cd which i own that was pressed in 2000, this one elevates itself past the heart stitched sleeves and attempts to transcend the wounding rather than wallow in it. Lets be clear, though. It doesn't entirely succeed.
There is something deeply self indulgent about all of the Bright Eyes music that i've heard and yet it seems to earn it and be worthy of it in some bizarre way that i can't fully comprehend. Conor Oberst's voice is one angle for this phenomenon. It has a character in its wavering, cracking, scratchy, vaguely whininess, that reminds me instantly of Modest Mouse in that 'i'm just barely holding it together' sort of way. Its wonderfully desperate. Generally i'm wary of the desperate, feeling that it may be teetering on the brink of disingenuousness. Knowing from my own experience with the desperation of expression that we frequently confuse the need for expressing something with what needs to be expressed.
The lyrics and music that attends the vocals go a long way towards legitimizing it, though. To say the album seems a tad overproduced would be like saying baroque architecture is a tad on the ornate side of things. But even in the obvious overproduction, digital mixing, and whatnot it feels stripped down, as though they used a sick amount of technology to make it sound like it was recorded on a victorola circa 1923. Somehow it works. And it works well.
Emotionally speaking, even though i can't shake the vague sensation that i'm being put on by a master at mimicry of the human heart, it's convincing enough and feels like Conor and friends are ripping out the still pumping heart out of their collective chests and showing it to you - grinning - before stuffing it back in to fill back up with the next set of experiences. It's good. It's definately worth owning, but it still feels just a little unsettling in its presentation. Maybe it's supposed to. Maybe its worth a listen simply because the music world of today is gorged on piss poor poets regurgitating the old wounds of the human heart, and at the very least here is a band that is doing something a little more beautiful with all that blood.
For instance, the spare and beautiful anthemesque "Nothing Gets Crossed Out":
"Because I Have been feeling sentimental for days gone by...all those summers singing, drinking, laughing, wasting our time. Remember all those songs and the way we smiled in those basements made of music. But now i've got to crawl to get anywhere at all. I'm not as strong as i thought."
If this were the entirety of the song i would probably grown, get reflective of my own mental state of the past few years and look back with emotional disgust at some high school nonsense and say that it has its place but i can't share the space anymore. But it goes on and lands with a nice, weak, hesitant finish:
"But if everything that happens is supposed to be and its all predetermined, you can't change your destiny. Then i guess i'll just keep moving and someday, maybe, I'll get to where i'm going."
Not bad. Not entirely transcendent but is there anything in ourselves that is, in reality, transcendent? Or does it just feel like that - a little tottering step here and there and the occasional awareness that you are where you are and where you are is where you're supposed to be.
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