My Favorite Album of the Decade is...Lifted or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

‘Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground’ Bright Eyes (on vinyl)

reviewed by Chris Connors

“Seems like it, right?...don’t you think?” The album begins with friends’ casual banter, their movements unsophisticated, as though the person recording has assured them all “No no the red light means off,” sounds discordant like kids kicking thru piles of raked leaves, everyone piling into a car on a Saturday night, disagreeing over directions, unsure of the best way to get there, wherever there is—a show, a friend’s show, a party, small gathering. No music legible yet, just this rustling, like Conor Oberst, the band’s lead singer, scaling the folds from behind the stage, feeling out the ruffles of the curtain in desperate but still shy search for the opening, the part in the folds into the light, to at length grip his vocal chords onto the cold windpipe and urge, “The future’s far too big to look at, kid, your eyes won’t open wide enough…and you’re constantly surrounded by the swirling stream of what is and what was.” The rattle in the singer’s voice begins weakly, or maybe he’s not yet aware, like a snake that doesn’t know he has a rattle…but as he continues on he notices the rattling from behind him shakes everytime he does something, in this case says something…and it’s in sync…paired up…it belongs to him. And as listeners we get to gravely experience the very moment, the change, the shifting of power, where the rattle no longer implies fear, or fright, no longer means a quiver, a tremble, a tremor, but at the moment “I mean it’s cool if you keep quiet but…I LIKE SING-IN’!” the rattle slaps up in the air, and the snake has realized he has been given something that will announce a dangerous and intriguing presence.
The singer has taken his place on stage, the light is dim, terra cotta, fuzzy, crackling, the audience quiet, immobilized. Lie still, listen and balance your body along the cave and hunt down the originator of the echo. What this album means to me I have to let run and run…
lying down in the dirt, at times solemnly lying, at times thankfully, happy solely in a daydream, like a kid…make an angel in the snow, lie there long enough kid you can’t move your back it’s so cold, but you can’t feel it so…the snow turns to frozen mud, then marl and wet clay, soft mud to dirt, with time, the seasons, whether your ready or want to turn back, your series of emotions that couldn’t be anybody else’s but your own, legs and arms wriggling about as you shift positions when this one gets old and begins to hurt—your fresh new that-and-there position, pole position. One in particular being flat on your back, nearly or perfectly centered enough, eyes on the cloud faces where no one else could identify the resemblances—what you believed at a young age was your middle-age, your mid-life crises, in the middle of the album poses those questions, “Is it true what I heard about the Son of God?…did He die for us? did He die at all?…and if I dried His feet with my dirty hair would He make me clean again?” Find out for yourself, kid.
Each song before this, each song after—a shift of your body, swing of your mood, tip of the tongue back of the teeth you hear everything. By the beginning of the last song you are saying aloud, “Here I go,” and knuckles into the ground push yourself up. The culmination is your standing up, having refused the grass that nature was bound to let grow over you like nothing happened, like you were never there to begin with. You stand up and jump and jump and further flatten out that mound of dirt and look down to discover it’s been a grave all along, but you’re ALIVE, you got thru it kid, with friends and family and on your own, and that’s your dead-you in the ground, out of sight and: all those thoughts that were your own it helped to know were somebody else’s (the true test of any Poet worth a damn) have seeped deep into the soil. You are pleased with this old you though, having known and been him, but now it’s time to go, to keep moving kid, find another patch of land or cloth to lie down on and shift positions in. A different grave to make you realize what it’s like to stand up, to on occasion glance back while still moving on to something else that will suit you for the time being.
This album means that to me, knowing you can always go back to that little burial site we got out of ontop, that didn’t suck your body thru with all your thoughts and flashcard-burned-in-memories you believed no one else could possibly carry. It’s okay to go back to that place and not feel anything close to shame but know deep down in your heart you were great then, like you are great now but in a much different, hopefully better way. Slap every rattle up in the air and unabashedly shift to a scream “Well, we all fit into your slogan on that fast food marquee…red blooded white skinned oh and the blues…OH AND THE BLUES I GOT THE BLUES THAT’S ME! THAT’S ME!!!.” and hope that is enough (But let’s not shit ourselves).