EP Review: Bright Eyes

'Four Winds'

Reviewer: Andrew Bennett

19.03.07

The Smiths once said that ‘I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar then it meant that you were a protest singer’. After a minute long acoustic guitar and violin intro Conor Oberst paints a Biblical apolyptic country jaunt. Like Mozza before him he manages to fuse a happy do lucky melody with dark articulate lyrics; ‘There's bodies decomposing in containers tonight, in an abandoned building where squatters made a mural of a Mexican girl with fifteen cans of spray paint and a chemical swirl’. Gone is the electronic experimentation of ‘Digital As in a Digital Urn’ and a return to his roots. With the strong violin playing and Oberst’s distinctive wavering vocals it succeeds to be highly listenable and a personal epic slice of Americana. Definitely wets the appetite for the album.

www.thisisbrighteyes.com

Andrew Bennett