 | | |
| | Cassadaga | | | Music Artist : | | Bright Eyes | | Music Style : | | General | | Record Label : | | Saddle Creek | | Release Date : | | 2007-04-10 | | Store Price : | | $13.98 | | Artistopia's Price: $13.98 | | Usually ships in 24 hours | | |
|
|
|
|
|
CD Tracks/Songs
Disc 11. Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)
2. Four Winds
3. If The Brakeman Turns My Way
4. Hot Knives
5. Make A Plan To Love Me
6. Soul Singer In A Session Band
7. Classic Cars
8. Middleman
9. Cleanse Song
10. No One Would Riot For Less
11. Coat Check Dream Song
12. I Must Belong Somewhere
13. Lime Tree
| |
Other Artist Albums
|
|
|
|
Customer Reviews of This Album/CD |
|
 Get The CD!!!!
Submitted on: 2009-09-26 |
|
I remember a couple months ago my father brought this home on CD and showed it to me. He had heard of it but remembered that the cover (and inside) were lenticular screens, and it came with a "spectral decoder," to see what the screens showed. I thought it was really cool, packaging wise, but i didn't listen to the music until a couple months later.
Eventually I put it on my Ipod, and decided to put it on while I read a book. I heard the opening notes of Clairuadients, and I was absolutely hooked. As the album progressed throught Four Winds and Make a Plan to Love Me, I was thinking "Holy crap! An album where I like every single song the first time around!" I couldn't put it down. Now normally I absolutely hate country and folk, but as I heard this I was absolutely amazed at the voice, orchestration, and songwriting quality. I didn't even know who Conor Oberst was until a couple months later.
Regarding the music, this is an amazing introduction to Conor Oberst, or Bright Eyes. This is the only exception I have made in my dislike of Country and Folk music. The album demonstrates incredible coherence, each song being in the proper place. Now I remember reading the reviews for "Lifted" and reading about how people dislike his voice. I personally think that those people need to go get their hearing checked, I find his voice is perfect, even if he doesn't have the range of Freddie Mercury or Thom Yorke. Conor Oberst has been hailed as the twenty first century Bob Dylan. If you (like me), can't listen to Dylan's voice, try Bright Eyes.
I didn't even look at the lyrics to this album until I bought "I'm Wide Awake It's Morning" almost a year later. After I looked through the lyrics to that, I picked up Cassadaga's liner notes. I never realized how good a lyricist he is until looking through the liner notes.
DO NOT BUY THIS AS AN MP3 DOWNLOAD!!! YOU MUST GET THIS AS A CD! YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!
This is a fantastic introduction into the musical world of Conor Oberst. Buy this album if you liked Roger Waters's Amused to Death. Buy this if you like Bob Dylan, although don't expect the guitar at the center of attention. Buy this if you are an aspiring lyricist or an English teacher. Buy this if you like this review.
If you want to sample several songs before buying the CD, try Clairaudients (You need to be patient with that), Four Winds, Hot Knives (just be careful about where you play that, listen to it on headphones first), and Lime Tree. |
|
|
|
 Grew on me.
Submitted on: 2008-12-04 |
|
This album has more of a country feel than the older ones. I was not that into it at first, most musically and lyrically (Which is really Bright Eyes' strong point).
...but I have to say, after awhile, it grew on me. Now I like it quite a bit for background. I must say though that I love it much more than the solo Conor Oberst album. |
|
|
|
 What Happened?
Submitted on: 2008-08-18 |
|
I would never call myself a huge Bright Eyes fan, but I do enjoy them. I was introduced to them in high school with the song "A Perfect Sonnet" on the Every Day and Every Night EP, leading to me downloading and purchasing several others after that. Conor's emotional and chaotic melodies made every album unique, and I love all the awkward vocalizing and experimental noise running throughout albums like Fevers and Mirrors or Lifted.
Then came the two big albums that really hit them off commercially - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Out of the two, I preferred Digital Ash as it was rawer and more of that experimental noise I loved from Conor's music, but the critics seemed to favor I'm Wide Awake moreso, which to me just sounded like a well-written country album. Don't get me wrong, it's not a dislike of the genre - it seemed more like a return to the old days when the music wasn't cheesy and hokey. There's no "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" on that album.
Cassadega - I remember hearing the single for this in my local stores and in the movie Cloverfield, the track "Four Winds." I didn't mind it, I didn't really find it to be anything special, but it wasn't a bad song and it was kinda catchy if you kept listening to it. Still, I avoided this album as nothing really drew me into it. I just received this disc in the mail free from the Pepsi Stuff bottle cap promotion going on recently, and I must say that after taking my time to listen to this album in its entirety... it's a huge letdown.
Here's what it sounds like to me: I'm Wide Awake met with great critical and commercial success, correct? Well, why not just recreate that and make it even more polished and like everything else playing on the radio these days? I was excited when the album first started and I heard all these bizarre sound clips thinking "this is leading to something really good," but not only is the pop-shine on every song a little unlike previous albums, but the song writing is just uninventive.
Most of the tracks sound like Conor wasn't even trying - like he was holding back and just started telling these stories about people he didn't care about doing things he couldn't be bothered with, and the music is just bland and repetitious. I've noticed that on Bright Eyes albums in the past, several songs will just be the same four chords over and over on loop, but at least the lyrics will be interesting and thought provoking. This album almost put me to sleep with how boring it is.
I will say that there were three songs or so that I actually did like. "Four Winds" would be one, but that's obviously the "hooker" on the album. "Lime Tree" was another that actually had some pretty good lyrics to back it's well-thought instrumentation. The third song I can't particularly remember, but then again with Bright Eyes, song titles are usually kinda trivial unless you're looking at the booklet while listening to it which at the time I wasn't. I would like to say it was "No One Would Riot For Less" but I can't be sure.
The most interesting thing I found to be on Cassadega was the cover and the decoder square. That had me even more excited when I first opened it because I hadn't really come across any inventive CD packaging like that in a while and to me it made me even feel like I had something special on my hands. It's a shame that the disc itself wasn't as unique. If this is your first entrance to the world of Bright Eyes, I highly suggest you look in the back catalog after hearing this album - my preferred album being Lifted as it captures all that I love about Conor's music with still somewhat of a pop sensability to it. If you're a big fan of I'm Wide Awake and don't know much else about the group, then you'll probably enjoy it. Maybe not as much, but moreso than I did.
Maybe me and this album just didn't click. Either way, I would not recommend it. |
|
|
|
This album haunted me...literally
Submitted on: 2008-06-10 |
|
| Everything about this album is and was true to form: desperate, disillusioned, violent, heartful and heartless. Spines wind on every track as he pours poison over ice and serves it with a dead man's smile and an umbrella on top. I can no longer bear to listen to this record for personal reasons, but I don't regret buying it. Anyone willing to bear witness to the stonings on this record will enjoy the old-fashioned shake-up; pedal steel grips this album in its emotional climax on "No One Would Riot for Less", no less at home than the symphonic cacophany that prologues this riveting album. As Conor Oberst cracks the sternums of religion, government and "war hawks", he does not spare his own. He opens himself on this album as he has on records before, but his vigor compresses a visceral and devastating impact. Behind the ranting and cracking of death rattles, the broken brilliance of Coner Oberst retains a bit of a quiet young man who still hasn't completely convinced himself that "he must belong somewhere." |
|
|
|
Worth it for "Brakeman" Alone
Submitted on: 2008-04-18 |
|
| If you really listen to this album, it's still Bright Eyes, it's still Conor Oberst, just polished to a high luster. The combination of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Wolcott is just magic. The entire collection is worth it just for the song "If the Brakeman Turns My Way". I will admit the beginning of the album is better than the ending, when the songs got kind of dark, but hey, it's Bright Eyes! It's still the same music, just showing more maturity and finesse, and in my eyes rates in his top 3 works--Lifted, Wide Awake and Cassadaga. You'll always get a surprise from Bright Eyes (think Digital Ash). |
|
|
|
