Listening Station: Bright Eyes, The Fiery Furnaces, Devendra Banhart, Hawthorne Heights

Bright Eyes shines twice as much with dual albums

Bright Eyes

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

Digital Ash in a Digital Urn

Bright Eyes principal Conor Oberst has come to symbolize many things in the world of modern rock. Thanks to the critical and relative commercial success of his band's 2002 album, Lifted, he's the most lauded singer-songwriter arrival since Beck, even deemed by some parties as this generation's Bob Dylan. He's a central figure to the burgeoning Omaha, Neb. rock scene, affiliated with the indie Saddle Creek imprint and working regularly with local contemporaries. He's stubbornly anti-industry, snubbing major labels, Clear Channel and corporate broadcast radio in order to maintain both artistic freedom and integrity.

And when his outfit's two new albums--I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn--hit stores simultaneously on Jan. 25, Oberst should be crowned the most versatile artist in rock. Both records couldn't be more aesthetically different, the nearly acoustic I'm Wide Awake taking cues from the folk, country and blues traditions, and Digital Ash adopting a largely electronic sound driven by keyboards and filled out by several instrumentalists.

And yet, throughout both collections, Oberst's musical identity--his confessional warble, his observational narratives, his frequent omission of choruses--is omnipresent and resolute, uniting the works. Furthermore, what might have seemed contrived on Lifted feels instinctive on these albums, from the declarative emotionalism on the more intimate I'm Wide Awake, to the elaborate (and sometimes messy) arrangements on the imaginative Digital Ash.

On the former, Oberst highlights his songwriting. Numbers such as "Lua"--the freak Billboard chart-topper--are rich in lyrical imagery, while "Old Soul Song" boasts one alluring chord progression after another. He cheats a little on "Road to Joy," his pop update of Beethoven's Ninth, but he matches the original's sense of ecstasy so perfectly you forgive him for the indulgence. As for the latter album, the concentration is less on the tunes and more on their musical aesthetic. Synthesizers and Wurlitzers are used here to establish mood, either creating atmosphere or punctuating melodies, to melancholic ("Gold Mine Gutted") or elevating ("Take It Easy (Love Nothing)") effect.

As for the lyrics, Oberst continues to excavate his soul, this time in context of what's going on around him. Politics and sociological phenomena stir up a fair amount of anxiety in the singer-songwriter, though he eschews defeat for genuine hope that tomorrow will be okay. "I'm wide awake, it's morning!" he roars at the end of "Road to Joy." Another day, another triumph--or two--for Conor Oberst.--Mike Prevatt

The Fiery Furnaces

The Fiery Furnaces EP

Double your fun again with Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger. Last year's beloved Blueberry Boat went 80 minutes, and now there's the 10-track EP, mostly B-sides, but with a robust weave that puts many a straining concept album to shame. Mother Friedberger was into Gilbert & Sullivan, so there you go: imprint sensitive kids with something that sentimentally crafty and they'll never shake the craving for episodic structure and theatrics, both of which are nicely manifest here. These 10 songs settle into a 3-2-3-2 grouping more easily discernible at the front than the back. By the second half, individual tracks start sectioning themselves as well, with the switchbacks and little breakdowns that almost always seem so comfortable for these two. "Smelling Cigarettes" darts, drifts and throws open the windows in the suite-built way of "A Day In the Life"--more like a Bongwater cover of it, perhaps, but with a lot of the Sergeant's brass nonetheless.--Dave Surratt

Devendra Banhart

Nino Rojo

With his thick mane of chestnut hair, luxurious beard and chiseled cheekbones, singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart resembles a more inviting, pinup version of Charles Manson. However scary that may be, this 23-year-old makes music about as unself-conscious as you're likely to hear.

Nino Rojo, recorded during the same sessions that produced last year's remarkable Rejoicing in the Hands album, is a timeless recording featuring 16 earnest songs with lyrics both simple and impenetrable. There are sexy pigs porking men, tongues rooting from breasts to lick clavicles, and there's even a song with the prog-rock pagan title of "Horseheadedfleshwizard." But there are also yearning odes to homecoming and mournful meditations on family. Bits of slide guitar meet the occasional horn. A simple harmonica finds a quaint chorus. But this is mostly the sound of a man and his finger picked guitar inside a Georgia home, where the reverberating wood floors and chirping cicadas outside complement the already viscerally atmospheric music.

Beginning gingerly with a delicate cover of "Wake Up, Little Sparrow" by children's music genius Ella Jenkins, only one song here stretches much beyond three minutes, the powerful closer "Electric Heart," where Banhart playfully overdubs his quavering vibrato to act as his own backup singer. In between, he's at his best when at his most playful, such as the mischievously catchy "At the Hop." "Cook me in your breakfast and put me on your plate/ 'Cause you know I taste great." So he's a hippie, but so was Nick Drake, and Banhart summons that same kind of incantatory magic and wraps it cozily in spare, breathtaking music.--Jim Bialek