I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
- Bright Eyes
- Band Name: Bright Eyes
- Record Label: Saddle Creek
- Release Date: Jan 25, 2005
- Critic Score
- Most active
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An album with the simmering glow of a masterpiece.
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100The finest alt-country album this side of Gram Parsons. [Jan 2005, p.129]
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A raw portrait of a 20-something disenchanted with his city, his country and his life. [Feb 2005, p.81]
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100It's the closeness and the honesty which makes 'I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning' a thing of awe.
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100Bright Eyes may well be on the verge of finally bridging the gap between his precocious talent and the maturity of an ageless songwriter.
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96Simply a great record. [#14, p.95]
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95Though this new political bent shows a heightened sense of maturity and substance, two of Morning's best tracks are poignant, unabashed love songs.
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Like the empathy of so many young men, especially artists, his is more self-involved than saints like us prefer. But at least he expresses empathy--to memorable melodies that very nearly bear up under the repetitions his rarely witless or superfluous lyrics require.
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91An often-great set of songs about loneliness. [Feb 2005, p.85]
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90The record that Bright Eyes fans have been praying for - carefully played, quietly honest, dripping with glorious poetry and painful insight, truly the work of utter genius.
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90This is the best album of the year so far.
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90Undoubtedly his best and most credible album to date.
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90Magic.... Its rhapsodies present a portait of an artist at an early height of his powers. [Feb 2005, p.102]
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90Where Ryan Adams replicates old records, this is something new. [Album of the Month, Feb 2005, p.72]
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It comes down to the songs, and these are the most intense he's ever written, one instant classic after another.
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87I'm Wide Awake weaves the personal and the political more fluidly than most singers even care to try, and the consummate tunefulness just strengthens those moments where he pinches a nerve.
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Easily the most cohesive and consistent album of his career, and one of the first great albums of 2005.
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A remarkable album... like an Americana 'OK Computer.' [22 Jan 2005, p.49]
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80The quality is high throughout.
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80Despite all the lonely missives and political outrage, Oberst comes off more like a troubadour of hope. [Mar 2005, p.132]
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80Stripped down and folky... there's no denying Oberst's presence as a major artist who continues to evolve and explore his craft with each release.
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80Lyrically, he's never been better.
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80This is an album overflowing with passion and tension.
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80The sound of an artist finally catching up with his talent.
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A culmination of Bright Eyes' decade-long habit of reviving folk-rock conventions and social engagement for a generation raised on the celebratory egomania of rap and reality television.
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[Oberst] displays a mastery of material, a reigning in of indulgences that promises stronger work to come.
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For the first time, Oberst sounds as if he's trying to conform his lyrics to his tunes, not the other way around. [4 Feb 2005, p.130]
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The theatrical tricks -- and they are tricks -- are more interesting this time around. But by and large, it's more of the same.
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60While it's all produced and performed immaculately, it just feels like too many of the rough edges have been smoothed off.
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I'm Wide Awake is an uneven product, full of everything there is to loathe and love about Oberst.
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A handsome channel 13 complimentary tote bag of an album that polishes his image as the fantasy rebellious son who hangs at socialist bookstores and swipes your Gram Parsons records.
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Far from being the second coming of Dylan, Oberst is as precious as Paul Simon, but without any sense of rhyme or meter or gift for imagery, puking out lines filled with cheap metaphors and clumsy words that don't scan.
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Moments, ideas, turns of phrase are jumbled together, good and bad, resulting in the sweet smell of garbage.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 86 out of 109
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Mixed: 6 out of 109
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Negative: 17 out of 109
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