The cynic in me thinks that rather than being an artistic statement, the fact that Conor Oberst has split his latest release into two separately available albums is just a bare-faced attempt to weasel double the money out of his incredibly loyal following. Normally when bands release a double album, you get both discs in one package, but in this case, if you want to hear everything that Oberst has recorded, you have to fork out for two, individual, fully-priced albums. The faithful will say that both discs are two completely different projects that happen to have come out at the same time, but come on, who really believes that?

The fact of the matter, is that "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" and "Digital Ash In A Digital Urn" represent two halves of the same whole. One is a decidedly sappy, poetic effort, while the other one is a darker, more sinister, electronic-based disc. To his credit, the two albums are pretty well conceived, and there is little stylistic overspill from one disc to the other. Unfortunately, that's where the good things stop here.

Far from being the genius that he's widely proclaimed to be, on both of these discs, Oberst proves that he has quite a way to go before he can realistically be considered to be a great songwriter and musician. The comparisons to Bob Dylan are pretty ludicrous, when one examines the efforts at songwriting that are served up here. Whereas Dylan had a knack for writing sharp, insightful poetry and setting it to hook-laden folk music, Oberst seems to be stuck writing clumsy metaphors and putting it against masses of murky sounding noise. Both discs here are guilty of gross songwriting negligence, although "Digital Ash In A Digital Urn" is marginally less terrible.

Oberst's trite, clichéd, whiny songs wouldn't be such a problem if they were backed up with some hooks or something else. Unfortunately, Oberst's lyrical masturbation is the only thing on display here, he obviously considers Bright Eyes too small for anyone else to have a say. It's a shame, because if there were some limits placed on him, if there was someone to check his shrill, melodramatic excess, he could possibly produce music that is a lot better than this is. The other problem is the sheer amount of filler on here, a lot of this stuff is quite mediocre when compared to previous Bright Eyes work. If you took the scissors out, there might possible be a single decent album in here, but as they are, each disc feels bloated and swollen with rather pedestrian songs.

In the end, both of these albums show that Conor Oberst has quite possibly let fame go to his head, and that he's wallowing, artistically speaking, in the same old stuff. Both of these albums would have been impressive coming from a fourteen year old, but Oberst is in his twenties now, and musicians far better than him were producing better work than this self-indulgent pap at his age. Being prolific is no substitute for being profound, and I think that Bright Eyes needs to concentrate on releasing a single good album, rather than a multitude of bad ones.