.RTS
The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 -11
Oberst turns'Eyes'to 'Eden'
more cryptic horizons through
By CAITLIN COWAN
DailyArts Writer
Conor Oberst has been given
many titles: savior, genius, this
generation's Bob
Dylan and - less ***
receptively -
flat-out hipster.
The work of Bright Eyes
Oberst's musical Cassadaga
vehicle, Bright
Eyes, has been Saddle Creek
as varied as his
monikers. The
27-year-old Nebraska native has
released an impressive six albums in
fewer than 10 years, although each
release has been of differing qual-
ity. After releasing the acclaimed
Fevers and Mirrors in 2000 and
Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil in
2002, Oberst hit a plateau with the
two discs released back-to-back in
2005, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn
and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning.
His latest, Cassadaga, is another
admirable attempt, but it lacks the
dynamic highs and lows that made
his previous work so skillful.
The album is named after a 112-
year-old spiritualist camp that
boasts two dozen resident clair-
voyants in Central Florida. Part
answering machine message and
part "Outer Limits" theme song,
the first track, "Clairaudients
(Kill Or Be Killed)," is another of
Oberst's brilliantly strange intros.
A clairaudient is someone who sup-
posedly can hear sounds beyond
the range of human perception.
It looks like Oberst is sending us
a message about his feelings and
abilities - typical of his pretension
to be sure.
While the tempo picks up on
the single, "Four Winds," the next
few tracks are mostly unremark-
able and often disappointing. What
made Bright Eyes' albums extraor-
dinary in the past was their begin-
ning-to-end majesty. Oberst is
typically very exacting, and doesn't
waste a single second or word on
his albums, but this time around
nearly a third of his latest is made
up of mediocre songs like the poky
"If The Brakeman Turns My Way"
and the banal "Classic Cars."
There are, fortunately, some
high points. The frantic strings on
"Middleman" lend the track a kind
Doesn't that haircut look familiar?
of Celtic-meets-country sound. The
soprano moans and eerily beautiful
lyrics on "No One Would Riot for
Less" comprise one of the album's
highest points. "Help is coming /
You kiss my mouth / Help is here,"
he sings.
"Make aPlanto Love Me"is asad,
endearing song about unrequited
love that's destined for someone's
MySpace profile. At first this seems
like a romantic ballad, but Oberst is
older and more jaded on this album,
and after a few verses the song's bit-
ter center becomes apparent.
'Clairaudience'
and other refined
pretense.
Oberst mixes in Eastern flavors
on "Coat Check Dream Song," and
cryptic, imagistic lyrics like "Stuck
on a ladder to heaven /On trial way
back in The Hague /Lullaby sounds
from the engine / In my Styrofoam
coffin," crafting a kind of pastiche
that's reminiscent of his stronger
earlier work.
For established fans there are
still a number of positive aspects to
Cassadaga: Oberst's lyrics and his
enchanting voice, with equal parts
gravel and sugar, are as good as
they've ever been. But from some-
one with so much evident talent it
feels like Oberst is holding back.
For all of his emphasis on oth-
erworldliness, clairaudience and
moving beyond the secular, Cas-
sadaga flies astonishingly low to
the ground.
a lens
Lyle Gomes
reexamines
man and nature
By ABIGAIL B. COLODNER
Daily Fine Arts Editor
"Little will be required from the
hand of art ... Nature has already
done almost all
that is required," I in
wrote Massachu- magnin
setts congress- Eden:
man Edward
Everett in 1832. Co Clecing
He was speaking Landscapes
of a secluded plot
of land slated to Through June 3
become an idyl- Athe UMMA
lic cemetery.
His statement Offsite Gallery
is in ways dated
- it precedes the
institution of public urban parks,
cemeteries being a more common
place for recreation in his day, and
his "Nature" entity is 19th century
romance epitomized.
Everett's sentimental reasoning
seems to echo through the misty
black-and-white photographs by
contemporary artist Lyle Gomes
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Lyle Gomes's photography is consistently ethereal and beautiful - a quiet documentation of man and nature.
in UMMA-Offsite's new exhibit,
"Imagining Eden: Connecting
Landscapes,"runningthroughJune
3. The California artist treks out to
hunting grounds, golf courses and
gardens in Europe and America in
the early morning hours when fog
still lingers and the paths are empty
of pleasure-seekers.
His panorama shots, heavily
cropped to a horizontal frame, are
well-suited to the kinds of land-
scapes he visits. Gomes looks at
spaces molded in a landscape tra-
dition which takes rationality and
harmony as guiding principles.
His fairly open spaces are punctu-
ated by arcades of trees or stone.
The landscapes glow, their edges
blurred into a bright haze like the
face of a 1930s film starlet in soft
focus.
His, camera never inserts itself
into the underbrush or low-hang-
ing branches, refusing to get up
close the way a wandering human
might. Instead, it seems to hover
over the scene. Often Gomes pho-
tographs from a seemingly impos-
sible spot, such as the middle of a
pond or on the railing between a
ledge and a valley, and his extreme
cropping of the lower section of the
view gives an eerie sense of waft-
ing a couple feet above the ground.
This technique makes Gomes'
viewers incorporeal. He doesn't
take the perspective of the British
nobility and San Francisco city folk
for whom they were designed, but
of the scene's natural surrounding
fog.
The quotes Gomes includes with
several of his photographs seem
particularly pointed next to these
images. Many of the quotes come
from19th-centurylandscape archi-
tects and urban officials who speak
affectionately of the way humans
can mold nature's quirky elegance
to serve their aesthetic preferenc-
es. Gomes's camera has the same
slightly detached tone. It places
the spaces on a pedestal and shows
them in their preserved and pris-
tine state, before the public gets its
hands on them for the day.
A placard introducing the works
speaks of landscapes that form a
"reconciliation of man's paradise in
nature," referringtothe Edenofthe
exhibition's title. The title suggests
the primary use of these spaces is
inhabitation, an earthly garden.we
haven't (yet) been booted from. But
Gomes shows these spaces before
inhabitation, elevated above that of
any human who might wander in in
search of peace and quiet.
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