Bright Eyes - 'Cassadaga' (Saddle Creek) Released 09/04/07

Cassadaga, a tiny town in East Florida where the damaged travel to be healed, where there are reportedly more psychics per square metre than anywhere else in the world, is an unlikely setting for the new Bright Eyes album. After all, this is a songwriter, the still prodigious Conor Oberst, who suddenly found himself on stage with the likes of REM and Springsteen during the 2004 US Presidential campaign, his incendiary ‘When The President Turns To God’ becoming something of an anthem for the, at the time swelling, protest movement. Lambasting Bush’s insistence on treating religion as some credible foundation upon which to launch his idiotic pursuits (“Do they drink beer and go play golf?/While they decide which countries to invade”), Bright Eyes’ contribution to that heady period when change seemed possible carried slightly more weight than, say, ‘American Idiot’.

Three years on, with the majority of opinion having faded under the weight of depressing deja-vu headlines, it’s tempting to see Conor’s referencing of such an overtly spiritual place as Cassadaga as an admission that sometimes we all need a little hope, that, to quote one of his own lyrics: “Why are you scared to dream of God/When it’s salvation that you want?” Aside from any political context, the album from which that line is taken, ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’, formed part of a startling double-shot that, along with his more consciously experimental, electronic outing ‘Digital Ash In A Digital Urn’, proved to be Bright Eyes’ creative peak thus far. So there’s clearly a lot, both ideologically and commercially, riding on this new record.

The first two tracks on ‘Cassadaga’ initially slot neatly into what is growing to be significant canon of bands (Arcade Fire, The Thermals to name the best two) whose most recent albums tackle the big themes: war, religion, global warming…you get the (bleak) picture. It would all be getting predictable, were the key lyrics in this instance not so audacious in their imagery. For instance, the Neil Young-ish plaintive country of ‘Four Winds’ namechecks the Bible, Torah and Qur’an before signing off with “If you burned them all together you’d get close to the truth” People have rioted over less. And that’s the single.

It’s from ‘If The Brakeman Turns My Way’ that ‘Cassadaga’ starts to overturn the listener’s expectations. Carried on a bed of steel guitar, piano and a gorgeous vocal harmony, it essays Conor’s feelings of being “a little lost” (admitted to in recent interviews), and neatly bridges the anger at the beginning of the record with the need for escape that eventually leads him to the semi-mystical town. Though hardly as radical a departure for Bright Eyes as the mysterious ‘Digital Ash…’ was, ‘Cassadaga’ is certainly the most orchestral work of the band’s career. The bulk of the album’s middle is given over to string sections, flourishes of woodwind and even, on ‘Coat Check Dream Song’, an outro of distinctly Arabian singing that sounds like the Islamic call to prayer, and is as explicit a cross-cultural statement as you’re likely to hear from such a mainstream artist. If earlier Conor was shaking his head at religion’s interference, here he is acknowledging its power as the source of humanity for many.