Cassadaga

Cassadaga is one of the best out of Bright Eyes' oeuvre. If you're feeling existential or lost, this record will either help, or maybe it'll just help you wallow. Regardless, it's brilliant.

1. "Four Winds"
2. "When The Brakeman Comes My Way"
3. "Hot Knives"
4. "Make A Plan To Love Me"
5. "Classic Cars" [ft. Gillian Welch]
6. "Middleman"
7. "No One Would Riot For Less"
8. "Lime Tree"

The Bible is blind. The Torah is deaf. The Qur'an is mute.
If you burned them all together you'd get close to the truth

When panic grips your body and your heart is a hummingbird
Raven thoughts blacken your mind until you're breathing in reverse
All your friends and sedatives mean well but make it worse
Every reassurance just magnifies the doubt
Better find yourself a place to level out

Oh, I've made love, yeah, I've been fucked, so what?
I'm a cartoon, you're a full moon, let's stay up

Life is too short
Death doesn't ask
It don't owe you that

Some things you lose
You don't get back
So just know what you have

And make a plan to love me sometime soon

And I keep looking for that blindfold faith
Lighting candles to a cynical saint
Who wants the last laugh at the fly trapped in the windowsill tape
You can go right out of your mind trying to escape
From the panicked paradox of day to day
If you can't understand something then it's best to be afraid
...
And they keep moving at a glacial pace
Turning circles in a memory maze
I made a new cast of the death mask that is gonna cover my face
I had to change the combination to the safe
Hide it all behind a wall let people wait
And never trust a heart that is so bent it can't break

So I have become the Middleman
The gray areas are fine
The 'I don't know, the 'maybe so'
Is the only real reply
It is the only true reply

So love me now
Hell is coming
Kiss my mouth
Hell is here
...
Wake, Baby, wake but leave that blanket around you there is nowhere as safe
I'm leaving this place but there is nothing I'm planning to take
Just you

Don't be so amazing or I'll miss you too much
I felt something that I had never touched
...
So pleased with a daydream that now living is no good
I took off my shoes and walked into the woods
I felt lost and found with every step I took

And those are the words that end the record. Composing and songwriting are truly a weird art. Either experience is transcendent or there are Muses guiding writers along their/our ways. I think it's both.