Connor Oberst has some of the best lyrics of this time, fantastic album. Not a bad song

great clever lyrics, nice melodies and guitar playing, many highly enjoyable song and very few weak moments. beautiful album.

Not consistently captivating the whole way through, but the lyrics are great and the spots that do shine are absolutely top notch.

The first time I listened to this the spoken intro really turned me off, somehow makes him sound a little over bearing. But once that's out of the way I really like this album a lot. Both lyrically and musically it's a stand out. If you like this album try out Right Away Great Captain! a side project of Manchester Orchestra's front man Andy Hull. They should seriously do a song or album together, a ton of similarities in their songwriting and voices.

there is a war going on, no jobs, no money, your relationship is on the rocks, which you should have never been in to begining with. It's just land locked blues

First Day Of My Life is probably the greatest Bright Eyes song ever!

Well, I listened to this album and I'm surprised. Pretty good album :)

It's good but he can sound a little over-wrought at times - I think he needs to get laid.

The sound of Conor buying into his own hype. Not Bright Eyes best.

"i'm wide awake, it's morning" is the better album of the two he released that year because it's more consistently good, feels more personal and therefore the songs feel more "real" to Conor (or his character), and the song ideas are generally better if only by simplicity (versus the electronic layers on the other album). The album starts off with the ONLY "intro" piece that i actually like and want to listen to of all of his Bright Eyes albums, which segues into "at the bottom of everything", a fun, upbeat song which is actually a fully-sounding (from music to lyrics) HAPPY song as in this sentiment " (in)to the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love / We must plunge". The gist of "we are nowhere and it's now" can be summed up by "Why are you scared to dream of God / When it's salvation that you want?" -- the best part of the song is the backing vocals of emmylou harris. She appears again on "land locked blues", probably the album's best song, a sad, touching song about walking away from where you're stuck with this humorous bit: " there's kids playing guns in the street / and one's pointing his tree branch at me / So I put my hands up I say: / 'Enough is enough, If you walk away I walk away.' (and he shot me dead)" culminating in "You'll be free child once you have died / from the shackles of language and measurable time / And then we can trade places, play musical graves / till then walk away". She also appears on upbeat-but-dark "another travelin' song", where the narrator states "I dream the dark on the horizon / I dream the desert where the dead lay down / I dream a prostituted child touching an old man in a fast food crown". "first day of my life" shares the optimism and light, upbeat nature of the opening track, with simple acoustic guitar as the song's backbone and lines like "This is the first day of my life./ I'm glad I didn't die before I met you. / But, now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you / And I'd probably be happy." which fit in with my mood then. "Lua" was the lead single, and it's a quiet, personal-yet-trivial account of love that will never be, where Conor sings "I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss / So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it / But me I'm not a gamble, you can count on me to split / The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist". Overall, the complex and tumultuous narratives of Lifted aren't present here, but there are still lines like "I'm a single cell on the serpent's tongue" ("poison oak") and "Well I could have been a famous singer / If I had some one else's voice / But failures always sounded better / Let's fuck it up boys, make some noise!" (from closer "road to joy" which evokes Lifted while seeming auto-biographical) that flow throughout the album.