Month of December , 2005

Desaparecidos
Read Music / Speak Spanish
Saddle Creek

I've been pretty stuck on this record since my drummer stuck it on my ipod. At first I thought there were a couple of hooks, but a lot of it sounded the same.

And then it grew on me like a fungus, and I started really listening to the words while I walked around in the cold of what appears to be a serious winter in store for us. (I hear that this is how people get snagged by teh emo)

And now I want to review it, so I bought it (I don't review anything I haven't paid for, that just strikes me as low).

A few caveats: I like some Bright Eyes. Specifically the recent record I'm Wide Awake It's Morning. I find the sister record Digital Ash in a Digital Urn terminaly boring with few exceptions, and I can't stand Lifted..., Connor Oberst's unabashed emo record. Lastly, Read Music / Speak Spanish was made in 2002 and it's now 2005.

This isn't a Bright Eyes record, at all. It's a RAWK record. A dissident rawk record. To that end, it's a fucking bullet. Minimalized is the confessional and introspection Bright Eyes fans (and foes) are used to, and to the forefront comes social commentary and subculture ideology, biting sarcasm, cutting depiction of the desperation and violence of modern american life, at home and abroad.

Take the song "The Happiest Place On Earth" that takes a big old bite out of patriotism and nationalism as it exists now in the US, juxtaposing national anthems with rampant militarism:

I got a letter from the army so I think that I'll enlist / No, I'm not brave or proud of nothing I just want / to kill / something / Too bad nowadays you just point and click, swing the satellite, hot white chariot! In the computer's blue glare bombs burst in the air / there was a city once now there's nothing there

And at risk of going too far with the lyric citing:

Our freedom comes at their expense / makes sense, does it? / dollars and cents / they're stretching barbed-wire across a picket fence / that's surrounding your / housing development / in case you lack the confidence

How many artists have the spine to just come right out with this? And to top it off, how many can do it well? In this regard, the record is quite exceptional. Compare "The Happiest Place on Earth" to Bad Religion's latest and noble efforts ("American Empire"), and you'll see the world of difference between expressing your discontent like any other punk record and doing it with real skill.

The songs of the record aren't limited to militarism or US foreign policy. Instead, they seek to blend the images of our politics with our waking lives, daily habits, and a concept of general American selfishness and glut to create a more full picture or rather depiction of moderm america. Not post modernism, not supermodernism, nothing so lofty. Just the big ugly now, steeped in blood and denied the glorious sci-fi future of jetpacks.

The record at times suffers from Oberst's voice. There's a time when sincerity should not always give way to singing on key. But let's be honest, this is a rawk record and not an emo record. There's no whining, there's whooping and hollering and intentional voice breaking that really serves the topics very well.

The pair of songs "Man and Wife, the former (Financial Planning)" and "Man and Wife, the latter (Damaged Goods)" are a heart breaking pair of tunes that rip the sitcom out of the conception of what a modern middleclass relationship is like. Gone are the dreams and suppositions, replaced with fear and desperation, arrogance and selfishness, materialism and status tearing oblivious people apart.

"I'm a bill you pay / I'm a contract you can't break"

So that's the bright side of the record. I'm a big fan. But the criticism that many of the songs "sound the same" is a pretty good point. By the last three songs I'm actually lost until we get to the part where Conner switches back to the introspection for a moment, suggesting that even he on his soapbox is not some innocent outsider looking in:

"Well I shouldn't talk, I'm just the same / Buy my records down at the corporate chain / and tell my self that I shouldn't be ashamed... BUT I AM!"

"Nevermind the shit that I sing about / Because I'd sell myself to buy a fucking house."

The record is really worth hittin up Saddle Creek with the pesos.

Addendum:

The cover art/booklet for the record is great, a velum printing of a housing development superimposed with a housing development, encapsulating lyric sheets designed to look like municipal planning board and zoning documents detailing the construction of a new housing development.

One of my favorite parts in the record has to be the lyric:

"Send the national guard to the Mall of America / They can dress the dead up / In tight designer jeans / Dies-el! Pra-da! It looks goooooooood!"

Oh yeah, it does.