Although I'm ordinarily not the most reliably objective reviewer when it comes to Bright Eyes, it's actually rather hard to resort to excited superlatives when it comes to the new Take it easy (love nothing) single. Thing is, it's not the easiest song to like, and it's so far removed from the stripped down simplicity of Lua as to make it feel a little contrived, a little over-cooked.

You see, Bright Eyes have ordinarily been a band about acoustic guitars, about down-and-out Americana, about life and how to deal with it. And clearly in releasing two singles from two forthcoming albums, Conor Oberst is making a statement. While I'm Wide Awake It's Morning ought to sound like the olde Bright Eyes previous outings have accustomed us to, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn sounds like an entirely different beast. For one thing, the chugging electric guitars remind more of Conor's rock side-project Desaparecidos, and the electronic shrouding sounds more like label-mates The Faint. Whilst I'm inclined to credit Conor for branching out, it's also hard not to be a little resistant toward a massive stylistic shift.

Well, maybe not so massive. Take it easy feels for all the world like a Bright Eyes song. Conor idiosyncratic drawl is firmly in place, the song meanders in the controlled loops Conor usually writes in. The lyrics are certainly the usual bona-fide angsty questioning of the self and the surrounding world

Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth.
Someone might get hurt but it won't be me.
I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free and a little bit empty.

In fact, the song arrives at a deconstruction of what Bright Eyes has come to mean to Conor, and what many a reviewer may have noted:

And I will try to be kind when I ask you to leave
We will both take it easy.
But if you stay too long inside my memory
I will trap you in a song tied to a melody
And I will keep you there so you can't bother me

It's fairly obvious that Conor uses his songs as a way of exorcising his personal demons, or so he would like us to believe. So far so good. This is indeed Bright Eyes. But then the instrumentation is wholly other. No pedal steel, no mandolin, no acoustic guitar. Nope. Instead, electric guitar, chugging viciously, electronic bleeps, processed drum cracks. A whole other beast indeed. It takes a couple of verses to take hold, but it is as effectively subsuming as the other 'normal' Bright Eyes. However, personally, I secretly think this just isn't the same.

That's the reason why I prefer the b-side, although every listen is drawing Take it easy closer to me heart. Anyway, Burn Rubber is more my kind of thing, as acoustic instrumentation clashes head on with processed effects, gradually subsiding and allowing the gorgeous acoustic riff to really shine through. In fact, this sounds like some of the experimentation on debut full-length album Letting Off the Happiness. There's also something terribly enjoyable about that anthemic stop-start chorus

Get behind the wheel. Stay in front of the storm

Really lovely, certainly more immediate than the single itself - although that's not necessarily a good thing. In a sense, this single is a bit weird because it gives a conflicting impression of a mysterious forthcoming album, it's going to be impossible to tell if Conor's pulled this oddity off until we hear it in full in January. For now, I'm intrigued, but Take it easy has somewhat dulled the edge of my excitement. So a conundrum wrapped in an enigma indeed.

Things really go off the rails from hereon in though. Cremation is an instrumental piece, it generates an interesting atmosphere, but remains mysterious, opaque and uncommunicative. It really does nothing for me, and there are literally only a handful of Bright Eyes songs I can say that about.

To sum up: interesting, but not exactly brilliant. Take it easy (love nothing) is an intriguing song that fails to fully convince, whilst b-side Burn rubber totally steals the show. I want to love the music as much as I love the packaging - glorious shimmering red cd-case, masking the red-ink liner design until you pull out the sleeve, a wonderful textured lettering effect. I just think my real problem is that this just doesn't give enough information to go on regarding the whereabouts of the band within this style, and I won't know until I listen to the Digital Ash album. Is this really a bad thing? Well, probably not. But I can't help but feel a little warily cautious rather than my usual unqualified excitement.

But then again, I just listened to Take it easy again, and I'm starting to just love it. The moral of the story is: don't fight it. Change is certainly the sign of a questioning mind, and proof that Conor is certainly not resting on his laurels.

Here's what I made of the partner disc, Lua

Recommended: Yes