After hearing Bright Eyes’ impressive folk album I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, it’s difficult not to come down hard on Conor Oberst’s other January release, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. While the former is a great piece of Americana pop, the latter is a disastrous, self-centered foray into electronic pop.
Digital Ash is probably Oberst’s worst album to date, but it’s a surprisingly mixed bag. Any other artist deviating so sharply from a successful formula would have killed a record like this, but Oberst has a genuine ability to attract the listener with his compelling voice and meaningful songwriting. While nearly all the songs on Digital Ash are flawed in some way, Oberst’s good instincts manage to rescue it from total self-destruction.
The writing is characteristic in its angst, but the impact of the lyrics is not enough to save the music from feeling phony. Digital Ash was marketed as the experimental, electronic sibling of I’m Wide Awake. While experimentation is fine, Oberst can’t seem to decide whether he wants to do something truly new or simply capitalize on the success of bands like the Postal Service. It’s not surprising that Oberst employed the considerable talent of that band’s Jimmy Tamborello on the album’s poppiest venture, “Take It Easy (Love Nothing),” but the result is a self-absorbed, derivative mess.
Digital Ash’s venture into pop fails on other songs, most spectacularly with “Gold Mine Gutted,” which sounds like a poorly produced prescription-drug commercial. There are a few rays of hope, especially “Devil In The Details,” but the album never escapes its self-imposed artificiality and barely avoids collapse. Oberst’s words are aiming for depth and intensity, but the shallowness of the music contradicts them. Sadly, Digital Ash lives up to its name.
