Happy 20th Anniversary to Bright Eyes’ seventh studio album Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, originally released January 25, 2005.
Digital Ash In A Digital Urn was released the same day as Bright Eyes’ masterpiece, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. Wide Awake’s immense shadow looms over folk rock to this day, relegating Digital Ash to a historical footnote and loveable B-Side for the true fans; one could easily write an article about Wide Awake without referencing Digital Ash, but Digital Ash is essentially defined by its status as a shadow of Wide Awake. It’s then easy to assume that Wide Awake is good and Digital Ash is worse, which is why one album is a classic and most people haven’t heard the other.
While part of this story is true—Wide Awake is the better album—there are other stories to tell about the popularity divide. The truly meaningful difference between the albums is not that one is good and one is okay, or that one is acoustic and one is electronic, but that one seeks order, and the other disorder. Digital Ash In A Digital Urn is a disorderly record; it does not adhere to simple binaries of good and evil, or the predictable and satisfying dynamic arcs of I’m Wide Awake, Its Morning. It doesn’t loom over its genre because it intentionally avoids making the kinds of bold statements that define its companion record. It is the more challenging album, the more disorienting album, and while it does not always work, its slice of reality is sometimes more honest than the raw anger of Wide Awake.
Digital Ash wastes no time in reaching bewilderment. Opener “Time Code” is an ominous, lumbering, piece, Conor Oberst’s voice buried malevolently in the mix, before dissolving into an instrumental coda that alternates between glitchy and soothing. The album feels like it’s falling apart at the seams, and it just started.
“Down In A Rabbit Hole,” the album’s fourth track, is a good example of Digital Ash’s quest for unsatisfying honesty. Halfway through the song, we drop into an instrumental bridge. Two measures in, the bass and synthesizer mostly drop out, leaving only drums and a few light electronic sounds behind. Then the main instrumental “theme” returns, remaining intact for the rest of the song while a verse (also intentionally buried in the mix) and a string section enter on top.
Like the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” before it, the back half of the tune sonically recreates a high, transforming the lyrics from the first half (e.g. “the sun turns to stone”) into felt experience. It’s disorienting, nothing like “what’s so easy in the evening / by the morning’s such a drag” (from Wide Awake’s “Lua”); there’s no moral judgment on “Rabbit Hole,” only description, recreation, of the feeling itself. It’s much less comfortable. It’s not the kind of album you rally around, but it hits.
Listen to the Album:
Digital Ash In A Digital Urn is replete with moments like this. “I Believe In Symmetry” finds Oberst singing a wishful lyric, set to an uplifting melody, against an instrumental backdrop that sounds like another song entirely. The instrumentals are actively working against him, making the peaceful reckoning with death that the lyrics propose feel much less stable. On “Devil’s In The Details,” a baby cries periodically through the instrumental section, competing with a pristine horn sound. The album is uninterested in helping us reconcile these two things; it just puts them next to each other.
It's not all confrontation. Album closer “Easy/Lucky/Free” is the friendliest track on Digital Ash In A Digital Urn. Ruminating on the death of someone he was close to, Oberst sings that he is “listening for patterns in the sound of an endless static sea,” searching for whispers of this friend from the afterlife. The synthesizers finally seem like they’re on his side, offering a placid three-chord loop as a bed for his lyrics to rest in. He claims that there’s nothing as easy, lucky, or free as death, but it’s too neat a conclusion. As the song ends, it glitches out one last time, briefly playing in reverse, before cutting short. Sure, Oberst says that he’s figured it out, but I don’t believe him. I’m not even sure he wants me to.
Digital Ash In A Digital Urn was never going to be the sensation that I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning is. Sure, part of this is about quality—Wide Awake is exceptional, while Digital Ash is just very good—but the real reason behind its quiet reputation is that it defies the rousing, easy answers of its folky partner. Both records are confrontations, but on this one, you’re never sure which side you’re on. And honestly, that’s a little bit truer.
Listen: