Feeling Lonely

Bright Eyes and Arcade Fire are so, so acclaimed, and to me neither is very special. There’s a lot of better stuff going on, in my opinion. With some trepidation I checked out Cassadaga, and I think there’s a lot to like. Oberst is a really talented arranger, the band is tight, there’s all that cool experimental stuff at the top of Clairaudients. But from track 8, Middleman, through track 13, Lime Tree, there’s only song as solid as tracks 1-7 (I Must Belong Somewhere). I also can’t stand the Biblical imagery. So overwrought. It really just makes me roll my eyes. I don’t think that anyone should ever be allowed to use “Great Satan” in any song… no matter what the point of the lyric is you come off sounding like an asshole, whether a stereotypical caricature of a liberal or someone trying to make a point. And the lines about Babylon–the word appears in both “Four Winds” and “If the Brakeman Turns My Way,” songs I find really catchy–similarly instill exasperation in me. At least when Bob Dylan was writing with annoying Judeo-Christian imagery he’d actually converted and was making music singing the praises of God.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 11:25 am and is filed under music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.