Rejoice in this Pink Noise
Last night I attended the Bright Eyes concert in Iowa City. The show lasted for an entire three and a half hours! Needless to say, my feet and back are in pain from standing in one spot for that long!
The first opening band was Capgun Coup from Omaha. Although they were good musicians, their lyrics and stage presence were terrible.
Fortunately, the second opening act was better. Folk/rock artist Simon Joyner (also from Omaha) played some bluesy folk songs on his guitar, and then he was joined by several of the guys from Bright Eyes. Simon seemed like a really cool guy. He had a very serious, dignified air about him (unlike the weird boys from Capgun Coup).
Finally Conor Oberst (lead singer of Omaha-based Bright Eyes) hit the stage. Mike Mogis played guitar, pedal steel, dobro, and mandolin. He is an amazing musician, and it was really fun to watch his “moves” as he did all kinds of fancy playing. Nate Walcott played piano, keyboard, and trumpet, and he was really good as well. The bass lines were wonderful! Loud and heavy, but with a touch of country-music twang. The bassist was Macey Taylor — he wasn’t a Bright Eyes regular, but he was great.
In my opinion, Conor Oberst is one of today’s premier poets/songwriters (listen to “Easy/Lucky/Free” if you don’t believe me). He seems like a very sensitive person. However, he is also a very confused/contradictory person. So it’s difficult to know what Conor really believes in a lot of areas (sometimes he sings about God and spirituality in a positive way, sometimes he expresses disdain for religion).
Negative comments aside, Bright Eyes’ show was great. I was happy to see that Conor has gone back to his “Indie” look (jeans, blazer, and cowboy boots instead of the fancy white suits which the band wore at the start of the Cassadega tour). The band played “Four Winds” and some other songs off the new album Cassadega, but mostly they played older classics like “Arc of Time” and “We are Nowhere and It’s Now.”
I was also thrilled when they played “Old Soul Song (for the New World Order),” which is my personal favorite. Conor introduced the song with something like “This song is about a protest. I’d like to dedicate this to Dick Cheney and his army of Satan” (perhaps he isn’t a fan of the Bush administration?!) During the encore, the band played a song by “the beautiful Tom Petty,” and Simon Joyner and the guys from Capgun Coup all came back on stage and provided “backup” vocals.
In summary, Bright Eyes doesn’t really put on an amazing show, and you probably wouldn’t have liked it. I enjoyed it because I believe the negative elements are outweighed by the beautiful lyrics and music that they perform, but I still would probably not recommend attending a Bright Eyes show unless you have nothing better to do.
Posted: November 5th, 2007 under Music.