Live Review: Bright Eyes - HMV Institute, Birmingham - 8/7/2011‏

Bright Eyes waste no time with a formal entrance and with 'Jejune Stars', the crowd is hit by an onslaught of angst countered with Conor Oberst's austere way with words. After formalities, the band break into their Cassadaga hit "Four Winds" with Mike Mogis taking over the fiddle part with his intricate guitar playing, lest to say every word is sung along by die hard fans shouting out rare cuts from Conor's back catalogue inbetween songs. The setlist varies from the 'Fevers & Mirrors' and 'Lifted' days but with the focus clearly on the present day with recent effort, 'The People's Key', as well as magnum opus, 'I'm Wide Awake it's Morning', Oberst's head is looking towards the future.

Conor Oberst, heralded as the sucessor to Bob Dylan, is a charismatic frontman, completely unorthodox from any other singer/songwriter in the same genre. With 'Digital Ash''s bouncy 'Arc of Time', Conor motions each lyric with an action ironically in satire to popular songs that rely on an accompanying dance (See: The Macarena), contrasting upon this though, Conor's alter ego of recluse poet truly comes out with songs such as 'Landlocked Blues' & 'Ladder Song' where there is a hostility in his voice and his entire being becomes opaque and is exposed to an audience of thousands, especially when he screams the line "You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting on" from 'Poison Oak'.

A surprising addition to the live band is Nate Walcott, hiding behind the piano he truly shines in the refined version of 'Lua' which features his modal trumpet complimenting Conor's vocal melodies, in this song in particular, his trumpet resonates sounds of Miles Davis' 1959 opus, 'Kind Of Blue'. Nate's trumpet can really scream though and on 'The Calendar Hung Itself', his wild trumpet takes Conor's harbouring aggrivated lyrics which have been asscociated with a terrible genre and adds a new flavour to it, which adds a touch of salsa into the song. Personal highlight of the night was the inclusion of "Cartoon Blues" into the set, the song is completely out of character for Bright Eyes to perform and with each word, you can hear Oberst's voice personally jumping out of his body and attacking his critics who dubbed him as the emo frog prince.

Words by George Gadd