Review Summary: Cassadaga takes a step back, back from the chaos of modern society hypo criticism, and shows the audience exactly what can be done to music; with a great sense of fun, idealism, and overall, expert composing.
"Bright eyes" shows a formidable appearance that exemplifies the most outspoken musicality under the sun. 'Cassadaga' takes most of Bright Eyes former albums, and turns up the velocity, and accelerates beyond the standard, everyday, boring genre. What Conor has gone and done is power out lyrics of sheer, raw meaning. Bright Eyes - 'Cassadaga' adds an orchestra as powerful as a tsunami, but overall shows lyrics as soft and peaceful as the lake.
Conor's lyrics are packed with twisted styles of words that will confuse the general audience, but once interpreted, can mean the difference of its own genre of music, and being a part of the hypocritical society of indie that examples pure nothingness. Of the first listen, it might just sound like a jumbled assortment of words, put together to make the band sound smarter, along with cheap instrumentals, but it’s so much more. 'Cassadaga's' new orchestra, the guitar, the bass, the fiddle, the formidable usage of other various instruments as such, goes right along with the beautiful lyrical style.
The instrumentals in 'Cassadaga' are nearly as important as the lyrics. I believe an 'acapella' version of 'Cassadaga' would be absolutely miserable. The instrumentals at first glance, sound pretty normal, like they are nothing special, but it has slipped too many minds of people about how they really work. The lyrics are constantly making a change in beat in 'Cassadaga', and along with it, go the instrumentals. In songs such as 'Hot Knives' and especially 'Soul Singer in a Session Band' show hidden, but specifically important beat changes, as the fiddle speeds up along with the bass. The two work together so well in the beat change and the measures for each of the styles the songs express is absolutely gorgeous.
One of my most favorites on the album, 'Middleman', takes its phenomenal bass, and deep hollow sound, and acoustics, to the next level. It's a complete masterpiece from minute one, till the end. 'No One Would Settle for Less' is an amazingly quiet song, with fantastic melodies that are regularly expressed all throughout the album, but not quite as well as this track. 'Classic Cars' is another amazing example of instrumental paradise, great intro, great verse, fabulous chorus, and a good outro.
On note of the twisted lyrics that I mentioned earlier, I’d like to elaborate on the subject. A lot of the songs, especially 'Soul Singer in a Session Band' show lyrics that the common man in the audience wouldn’t be able to interpret into the common English. Strange tongue is everywhere in this album with verses such as, "It's an infinite coincidence, but it doesn’t form a plan", and "sheep chameleon", and it takes thought and consideration and even some time to translate them into the typical plots that the tracks speak of. It really is overall, a sensible and sophisticated vocabulary that really dwells in an area of on-the-spot understanding,
'Cassadaga' is a great example of what can be accomplished with a group of well educated people that excel at what they do. And 'Bright Eyes' knows that they have that much anyway. And the amazing part of this album, to me anyway, is that it was released in 2007. I find it absolutely astonishing that this kind of mentality in music, even indie, still exists, and I am definitely willing, based on this album, to go out and find more.
