Track Listing
1. 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
| Details | | Playing Time: | 62 min. | | Producer: | Mike Mogis | | Distributor: | Alternative Dis. Alliance | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Composer: Conor Oberst.
Bright Eyes: Conor Oberst (guitar); Mike Mogis (12-string guitar); Nate Walcott (electric piano).
Personnel: Hassan Lemtouni, Sean Foley, Gillian Welch, Andy LeMaster, Rachael Yamagata, Jake Bellows, Ted Stevens, Sherri DuPree, Stacy DuPree, Z Berg (vocals); David Rawlings, M. Ward (guitar); Anton Patzner (violin); Sarah Wass (flute); David Moyer, Brian Walsh (bass clarinet); Myka Miller (oboe); Stephanie Drootin, Tim Luntzel, Dan McCarthy (bass instrument); Shane Aspegren, Janet Weiss, Maria Taylor, Jason Boesel (drums); Dan Fliegel, Dan Bitney, Michael Zerang, Clark Baechle, Jonathan Crawford (percussion); John McEntire (electronics); Suzie Katayama, Bill Meyers.
It's clear that the year-plus Bright Eyes's Conor Oberst took between 2005's widely acclaimed I'M WIDE AWAKE, IT'S MORNING (and the simultaneously released DIGITAL ASH IN A DIGITAL URN) and 2007's CASSADAGA was well spent. The product of intensive studio time, a crack assembly of musicians, and lavish, lovely production and arrangements, CASSADAGA stands as one of Bright Eyes' most confident and consistent works.
The album throws together genres--folk, country, rock, pop--and coats it all in a gauzy dressing of strings, harmonies, and high-end atmospherics. Yet at the center of it all is still Obert's songwriting: witty, emotive, literate, and replete, this time out, with references to the expanse and grandeur of America as a playing field for life, love, and politics. At times reflective, at times rousing, CASSADAGA plays like a sweet pop dream, and adds another notch to Bright Eyes' already impressive discography.
Editorial Reviews
4 stars out of 5 -- CASSADAGA is an album to warm souls, rally minds and break hearts in equal measure.
Mojo
Ranked #23 in Q's The 50 Best Albums Of 2007 -- Conor Oberst has made his most assured album to date...
Q
With sweeping string sections almost reminiscent of Smashing Pumpkins, psychedelic pop structures, political protest poetics and dusty country production....[His] most opulent work yet.
Kerrang
[H]e offers some of the most polished country-folk of his 14-year career. His lyrical acuity is in tact...
CMJ
4 stars out of 5 -- [With] ambitious string arrangements and swinging instrumentation that echo great '70s works by Joe Cocker and Elton John.
Alternative Press
4 stars out of 5 -- The strapping, clear-headed coherence of 'Four Winds' is echoed throughout the album....At long last his star is born.
Q
Musically, it's his richest album yet, full of Nashville twang and Branson brassiness. And lyrically, the itinerant-traveler conceit is intriguing... -- Grade: B
Entertainment Weekly
4 stars out of 5 -- Oberst's countryish genre studies have deepened with a very adult loneliness.
Spin
Included in Rolling Stone's 50 Top Albums of the Year 2007 -- Oberst's loose, memorable tunes and lyrics about crises both personal and global are consistently engaging...
Rolling Stone
4 stars out of 5 -- [With] remarkable love songs....[Oberst] shows he can still tell us something by communing with himself.
Rolling Stone
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