I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005) :: Bright Eyes
There was a certain time in my life where my music taste took a turn from my 90’s female musicians obsessions to a time when I fell in love with both the male singer-songwriters of the early 2000’s, and re-fell for a handful of” boy rock bands”. This was my era of finding and falling hard for The Libertines, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes, The Killers and Bright Eyes. This musically charged time in my life also marked a chapter when I would develop some very strong friendships with some amazing women, and also come to terms with my failing marriage. This was a coming of age that was fraught with as much change and learning as my adolescence held, thus the music of that time stays just as strong in my heart, and in my memories.
This album, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, is one of the albums that had the biggest impact on my life at that point, and is the album I chose for this week’s “My Favorite Albums” feature here at lyriquediscorde. Following is the track-by-track listing, including my three-sentence ode to each song. I hope you take the time to give the songs a listen, and consider adding this album to your own catalog of music. Also, I would love to hear/read your reflections on this album, if it is one of your favorites, too (comment below, please).
At the Bottom of Everything
An interesting introduction to an album, this song starts out as a conversation, a story-telling of a plane crash that leads into a song that, to me, celebrates life at the moment of its unexpected ending. It reminds me of my marriage at the time, how it was at that crash and burn place, crashing, ending, yet at that point of destruction I kept seeing this gleaming light of hope for a new life to come. Sometimes it is when things fall apart that possibility really begins to come clear.
We Are Nowhere and It’s Now
Ten years living with an addict and an alcoholic one learns to live in denial, in a make-believe haze of pretending everything is okay, and a life filled with sleepless nights and held breaths, forever waiting for things to implode in your face. One day you wake up and there is no way to continue to live the lie any longer, you hit the wall of nowhere and you know for sure that you have to get anywhere but here. Every next step that follows will change everything.
Old Soul Song (For the New World Order)
When the whirlwind happened I clung tightly to my music to keep me held together. It was mostly the new songs though, the new albums, that I kept replaying because the past was too heavy to look upon. I longed for new, for change, for a place to start over from, and leaned towards a new soundtrack to accompany me with.
Lua
One of my all-time favorite songs, and my favorite Bright Eyes song. This reminds me of a different time in my life than this album was, it reminds me of my very late teens/very early twenties when I haunted the nightlife of Hollywood. It recalls my own time of addiction and dangerous living, both the good and the bad of that part of my own life story.
Train Under Water
Friendship and new love was on the horizon, connections with people that I had held at a distance because it is what you do when your day-to-day life is so precarious, and in many ways, dangerous. I felt like something had been cracked open inside me and I could finally breathe deeply and live fully. Passion and energy pulsed through every cell in my body, and I was just trying to fly, and not fall, or drown; my eyes were open wide.
First Day of My Life
One of my all-time favorite love songs ever, First Day of My Life also has one of the most heart-felt and touching videos. This song reminds me of being in love and that feeling when it first begins, how it feels like the first time ever, and like being born again into love. It also reminds me that love is work, and not something that just falls into your lap, but that the work is worth it as love is the one of the best parts about living there is.
Another Travelin’ Song
I would travel across country (again) and try to start in a new city (again), and I would travel backwards and go back home to California (again). My “flight” instinct would kick in hot and heavy, holding hands with my ever-burning gypsy soul. I would travel to another country, too, and find myself falling in love with yet another new city (again).
Landlocked Blues
I have a theory that every song and nearly every character named Laura is associated with death, be it actual death, or the death of something. This song is not an exception, as it is a song about the death of a relationship, and a fight to keep it from dying/ending. Sometimes you have no choice but to walk away, even if you do not want to, even if you really want to stay.
Poison Oak
I can still remember where I was standing when I received the phone call, how it was a Sunday in mid-February, in 2009. The words washed over me and through me, but I could not feel them. It would be a year later that I would start to feel the reality hit that you had died, that it was not a rumor or a threat that you would make, that it just was and that you were just not on this earth anymore, by your own hand, even though I of course knew it, I just had not been able to feel it until then (I am still learning to feel it completely).
Road to Joy
This song is a driving song, a morning song, a song to get me going, to motivate me, and to help me feel like I can conquer and persist in this life. This song makes me feel less alone, less broken and helps me feel like I am not the only one that is sometimes falling apart. This song is a song I always need to turn up loud and sing-a-long to loud, too.
lyriquediscorde 