Fevers And Mirrors

While 2002's LIFTED was the record that blew Bright Eyes and its hyper-poetic frontman, Conor Oberst, into the public's consciousness and up the Billboard charts, its predecessor, FEVERS AND MIRRORS, put him on the next-big-thing map. The third official album in the band's catalog, FEVERS AND MIRRORS finds Oberst & Co. codifying the vision nascently established on LETTING OFF THE HAPPINESS. Oberst furiously wrestles with his emotions as he upends confessional singer-songwriter tropes while producer and multi-instrumentalist Mike Mogis frames his whims in shifting, episodic textures that include pulsating organs, dulcimers, and vibraphones.
As with all Bright Eyes albums, this one begins and ends with Oberst's strong songwriting and preternatural gift for dramatic, narrative lyricism. "A Scale, A Mirror, and Those Indifferent Clocks" includes the line "Now I know a disease that these doctors can't treat/you contract on the day you accept all you see". Oberst seems to be kicking and screaming against this possibility through a strained larynx--most notably on the anthemically strung-out "Calendar Hung Itself" and the eruptive refrains of "Sunrise Sunset". While "Something Vague" and "Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh" each predict the operatic alt.country the band would perfect on CASSADEGA. Here Oberst is still embracing his influences--openly channeling Eliot Smith on the opening track and SISTER LOVERS-era Alex Chilton on "The Center of the World". Arguably, pound for pound the best Bright Eyes album, FEVERS AND MIRRORS captures Oberst before the masses did.|