TRACK REVIEW
Bright Eyes
"Four Winds"

I haven't really been keeping tabs on Conor Oberst for a while. The last effort of his I got excited about was 2002's utterly brilliant Lifted: or The Story is in the Soil, Keep You Ear to the Ground, but then he got really famous, dated Winona Ryder, made a couple of EPs I still haven't heard and kind of fell off the 'Sup radar. Well, nice going Conor, because your new single is amazing and has rocketed you back to the top of our hit parade.

"Four Winds" confirms the mounting suspicions that Bright Eyes have indeed completely gone country and are never looking back. Fiddles, slide guitars, the works: everything points to the fact that Conor is now officially the Jack White People Aren't Sick Of, and we'd take this incarnation over the whiny, emo Conor of yore any day of the week. His lyrics remain haunting, piercing, hitting the nail on the head in all the right places, while the jingle-jangle instrumentation is reminiscent of Emmylou Harris or even Dolly Parton at their very best, without ever sounding like an indie rock hoedown. Welcome back, Conor!