Bright Eyes – The People’s Key (2011)

The People’s Key is easily the most rock ‘n’ roll project Conor Oberst has worked on, at least since his pre-Bright Eyes days. I have to say I’m a little dissappointed by the direction he took. I think he can write a wonderful folk song. He’s a gifted lyricist and had learned to hone his vocal delivery so that he no longer sounds like a vain teenager. The People’s Key explores electric guitars a lot more, in a rock way, not a folk-rock way. Also, synthesizers are all over the place, taking this in a direction more poppy and less spacey than his last significant experiment with synths (2005’s Digital Ash in a Digital Urn).

He’s coming right off his two releases with the Mystic Valley band and his album with Monsters of Folk. I thought the Mystic Valley albums were among the best things he’s done; I thought his songwriting really developed. He’s shown flashes of brilliance since he was 20, most often in the lyrics, but somewhere between Cassadaga (2007) and Conor Oberst (2008), he figured out how to put it together for a full album.

The biggest problems with his work, as I see it and as people I talk to seem to indicate, are his vanity and his self-indulgence. His personality doesn’t matter much except for the fact that the way he sings has sometimes come across as whiney. He also had a habit of putting his personality on full display, with minimal or insignificant instrumentation or melody, earlier in his career. I didn’t tend to care for his slower songs through his first few albums for that reason. He really needs strong melodies to go along with his lyrics, because often his vocal delivery communicates a sort of frailty.

I expect this album will take some getting used to. I like the single, “Shell Games,” quite a bit. It’s got a catchy chorus and it progresses nicely. The melody (in the beginning) reminds me of “If the Brakeman Turns My Way” from Cassadaga.