MUSICAL INSIGHTS INDIE FAVORITE BRIGHT EYES BRINGS ITS HEART AND SOUL TO THE BOWL.Byline: FRED SHUSTER >MUSIC WRITER Bright Eyes Bright Eyes may refer to:
Once tagged "rock's boy genius" by the music press, Oberst turned 27 this year and saw Bright Eyes join a select group of current bands that have sold more than 100,000 copies of a record. Bright Eyes has had albums occupy the top two spots on the Billboard charts On January 4, 1936, Billboard magazine published its first music hit parade and on July 20, 1940 the first Music Popularity Chart was calculated. Since 1958 the Hot 100 has been published, combining single sales and radio airplay. simultaneously and has sold out shows in every corner of the world, while many better-known bands are stuck at the starting gate starting gate n. Sports 1. A series of stalls with interconnected doors that open simultaneously at the beginning of a race. 2. . During the silence between Bright Eyes songs, girls have yelled, "I love you, Conor!" in just about every language in existence. "I learned early on, our band tends to elicit strong feelings either way," the thoughtful, dark-eyed Oberst said a few days ago. "I've had the most ridiculous, flattering things said about me and the most hateful, hurtful things that went way beyond just criticism of our music. I don't find any of it to be accurate, but it's something you can't entirely ignore. I know why I do what I do." If Oberst sounds like an old soul, he is. The singer-songwriter, who hails from pastoral Nebraska, first attracted the attention of the indie world in 1994, when he was just 14. In the following years, the Years, The the seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109] See : Time prolific songwriter released a number of albums and extended singles and co-founded the Saddle Creek
USA Today USA Today National U.S. daily general-interest newspaper, the first of its kind. Launched in 1982 by Allen Neuharth, head of the Gannett newspaper chain, it reached a circulation of one million within a year and surpassed two million in the 1990s. recently raved that Oberst's "sharply written heartland vignettes are set to graceful melodies and swaddled in lush orchestration orchestration Art of choosing which instruments to use for a given piece of music. The sections of the orchestra historically were separate ensembles: the stringed instruments for indoors, the woodwind instruments for outdoors, the horns for hunting, and trumpets and drums and layers of breezy acoustic instrumentation." Oberst's heartland background has much to do with the heart in his increasingly sophisticated music. "In all the years of doing our own recordings and making the music ourselves, we've never had a producer or someone in charge saying, 'That's a terrible guitar tone,' or 'You're out of key,' " Oberst said. "It's been trial and error -- with plenty of happy accidents. I guess that's where a lot of the soul comes from. Living in Omaha was part of it. There was no infrastructure there, so we we had to develop the idea that we had to do it ourselves." In its most ambitious performance yet, Bright Eyes appears Saturday with the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheatre at 2301 North Highland Avenue in Hollywood, California, USA, that is used primarily for music performances. The "bowl" in this context is the natural cavity in the earth into which the amphitheater is built, rather than the shape of the , along with openers Yo La Tengo and M. Ward. The cinematic musical arrangements for Oberst's latest incarnation of Bright Eyes were composed by multi-instrumentalist band member Nate Walcott, who also arranged the lush orchestral pieces on Bright Eyes' seventh album "Cassadaga." The ensemble's Bowl debut follows its sold-out concert in May at Disney Hall, where the group performed classics from its eclectic repertoire, as well as acclaimed songs from "Cassadaga." "This is going to be a lot more fun once we pull it off," Oberst said. "It will be a relief. But really, this is a night for Nate, who spent every single day for the last six months working on these arrangements." Oberst's lyrics are poetic and apocalyptic. In the song "Four Winds," for example, he wails in a sweet, plaintive plain·tive adj. Expressing sorrow; mournful or melancholy. [Middle English plaintif, from Old French, aggrieved, lamenting, from plaint, complaint; see plaint. voice about a woman "standing in the ashes at the end of the world." In the foreboding "Arc of Time," he sings of the fear of death and the possibility of eternal life. Other songs on "Cassadaga" are blunt in their depictions of youthful exasperation in the Bush era, along with references to Hurricane Katrina  Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism. , holy wars and polar ice-caps among ruminations on
life, love, history, death and the afterlife. The album was named after
a community for psychics in central Florida
Central Florida is the central region of the United States state of Florida, on the East Coast. , which Oberst visited. "It's got this really intense energy because most of the people that live there are psychics and mediums," Oberst said. "It's unusual for me to make a trip for something other than music, but this wasn't a vacation. It was kind of a pilgrimage. There's something powerful that happens when a group of people focus their collective minds in a certain area. I believe in that energy and it stuck with me." Oberst, who has been on what he calls "a severe Willie Nelson kick" while on the Bright Eyes tour bus, has also been considering current events and how they link to America's past. "I can only hope for some kind of logic and some intelligence to be restored to the presidency," he said. "It's obvious the people in power are so self-serving and only serving the needs of a such a small part of the population -- basically their friends. It just blows my mind. I'd like a government that represents the people, and the one we have doesn't do that. "America has the capacity to reinvent itself, especially when you think about the two biggest evils that were central to the birth of our country -- the genocide of Native Americans so we could live here, and slavery that made us rich. That's where we started from, but the fact that we moved away from that and embraced civil liberties and civil rights and movements to help the disadvantaged gives me faith that America can recover from what's going on What's Going On is a record by American soul singer Marvin Gaye. Released on May 21, 1971 (see 1971 in music), What's Going On reflected the beginning of a new trend in soul music. now." If anyone can point the country's youth towards that end, it might be Oberst. Fred Shuster (818) 713-3676; fred.shuster@dailynews.com The collaboration between Bright Eyes and the L.A. Philharmonic builds on an ongoing trend of nontraditional pairings at the Hollywood Bowl. Here are some highlights. >Air The French pop duo Pop duo is a term generally referring to a pop band with only two members. Many pop duos have made a name for themselves as much as or more than bands with 4 or 5 members. Famous pop duos of the 1980s include the Pet Shop Boys, Eurythmics, Erasure, Red Box, Savage Garden, Roxette, played at the Bowl with full orchestra in 2004, successfully bridging the gap between pop and classical music. Special arrangements of the duo's electronica-pop were created for the program. >The Decemberists Last July, the bold indie outfit previewed new orchestral arrangements of their songs, and kicked off a tour in which the group performed with symphonic sym·phon·ic adj. 1. Relating to or having the character or form of a symphony. 2. Harmonious in sound. Adj. 1. accompaniment -- a trek spearheaded by the efforts of Hollywood Bowl programmers. >Dead Can Dance The ethereal gothic-pop group Dead Can Dance marked its orchestral debut at the Bowl with selections conducted by award-winning composer Jeff Rona. The meeting of the group's textured European folk and ghostly melodies with classical strings was deemed one of the highlights of the 2005 season. >Belle & Sebastian The Glasgow indie pop The article "twee" redirects here. For a definition of the word "twee", see . Indie pop is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid '80s, with its roots in the Scottish post-punk bands on the Postcard Records label in the early outfit sold out the Bowl two summers ago with a performance that saw the symphony embellish and bring out the group's sophisticated '60s pop inspirations and harmonies. >Brian Wilson In 2000, the Beach Boys genius performed the entire "Pet Sounds" album with 60 classical musicians. Van Dyke Parks Van Dyke Parks (born January 3, 1943) is an American composer, arranger, producer, musician, singer, and actor. His work spans six decades, and he has worked with luminaries from Grace Kelley to the Beach Boys and the Byrds. conducted the orchestra during the "Brian Wilson Suite," a piece he arranged especially for the evening. >F.S. CAPTION(S): 4 photos, box Photo: (1 -- 3 -- cover) THE VISION BEHIND BRIGHT EYES (4 -- color) BRIGHT EYES The band includes Nate Walcott, left, Mike Mogis Mike Mogis is a Nebraskan producer/engineer and multi-instrumentalist who, along with his brother A.J. Mogis, founded Presto! Recording Studios (previously known as Dead Space Recording and, earlier, Whoopass Recording). and Conor Oberst. Walcott arranged the music for the band's Saturday debut at the Hollywood Bowl with the L.A. Philharmonic. Box: The collaboration between Bright Eyes and the L.A. Philharmonic builds on an ongoing trend to nontraditional pairings at the Hollywood Bowl. Here are some highlights (see text) |
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