Favorites: Albums — 426 to 450
Brnging in the happiness, and other emotions, too...
#426: Letting Off The Happiness (1998)
Artist: Bright Eyes
Saddle Creek
Kicking off a brand new page of the archive with yet another massive genre pivot! Going from the prestigious, polished bluegrass of Flatt and Scruggs straight into the raw, lo-fi tape hiss of early Bright Eyes is exactly how I like to keep things unpredictable. Released on Saddle Creek in 1998, Letting Off The Happiness is essentially the ground floor of the Omaha indie-emo explosion. This is a teenage Conor Oberst just absolutely bleeding into a microphone. It's messy, fragile, and drenched in a chaotic DIY bedroom recording aesthetic (or in this case, basement, as seen in VHS footaeg incorporated into the documentary Spend an Evening with Saddle Creek) — complete with acoustic guitars, weird synths, and drum machines bleeding all over each other. As someone who spends a lot of time building tracks from the ground up, there is something undeniably powerful about hearing an artist capture pure, unpolished emotion without worrying about studio perfection. It's incredibly visceral and a totally essential, brilliant piece of 90s indie history.