Bright Eyes, “Four Winds EP”

This is the new Bright Eyes EP that I guess is supposed to get us psyched up for his album release on April 10. Either that, or it’s just a ploy to sell more records by making you buy the same thing twice. I lean ever so slightly towards the latter.

The disc starts out with two cool songs, “Four Winds” and “Reinvent the Wheel,” which are followed by four expendable lesser efforts. I don’t really get why this wasn’t just released as a killer double A-side single, but the folks at Saddle Creek have never been very good at self-editing, subtlety, modesty, or restraint, so there you go . . .

“Winds” is lyrically overwrought but it has a bitchin’ instrumental intro that really straps you in and keeps you there. The whole thing is fiddle driven folk-pop in the Desire-era/Rolling Thunder Revue style of Dylan in the seventies, but it’s more poppy than that and less world weary. (More on this Dylan reference later . . .) The second tune, “Reinvent,” is high pop style, which really only becomes folkier through its arrangement. Strangely, this number sounds way more radio-ready to me than “Four Winds,” which is yet another reason why this EP would have worked much better as a simple single. The lyrics make me think of Elliott Smith, but I really don’t know what they’re about.

And then things degenerate from there. Tracks 3 and 6, “Smoke Without Fire” and “Tourist Trap,” are typical Bright Eyes-ballads-that-go-nowhere. For me, Connor Oberst still isn’t a great lyricist. He’s an OK songwriter with a lot of charisma who thinks he’s a great lyricist, and when he indulges these thoughts he really loses me (although I doubt he’ll learn to hold back anytime soon). The other two cuts, “Stray Dog Freedom” and “Cartoon Blues,” chug along inoccuously enough, but for me really don’t go anywhere. When the latter song shifts into studio-weirdness territory with some funky vocoderish/glitchy effects, I know that even the Bright Eyes guys know that this is weaker material in need of a makeover, which they needlessly give it. Slapping “blues” in the title itself seems almost like a pre-emptive admission of defeat.

So yeah, long story short: Continue looking forward to the new Bright Eyes if you already were, and download the first couple songs on the EP if you need a fix.

(And by the way, my Dylan reference here was self-conscious so that I could strategically rail on the fact that the similarities between Dylan and Bright Eyes stop right about here. For some reason, people in the music press have started making this comparison pretty wildly and widely and I not only don’t see it, but actively resent it. Connor Oberst should too. Why he needs to be compared to a 60 year old man in order to prove his credibility is utterly beyond me. I’m not a huge Bright Eyes fan. I thought their last album was good, which is why I’m interested in this one, but I don’t need some fatuous link to the past to get me interested in these guys. Dylan was the second or third greatest American artist in the 20th-Century. Connor Oberst is a pleasant flavor-of-the-month. The two should not be confused, to do so is a disservice to all parties involved — musicians and listeners.)