Bright Eyes — I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning/Digital Ash In A Digital Urn

Give a hand to Conor Oberst, who pulls off the double-disc trick without any half-assed songs. The traditional country emo of Morning and its electronic counterpart, Urn, are filled with Oberst's obsessions — incessant loneliness, death and temporality and starry-eyed hope — but the themes are now grounded in modern warfare. Heading the fight is our indie-prince pin-up, whose main artillery is his vivid storytelling and a voice that easily moves from fragility to jarringly pained. But he also has a huge rotating army of players, including Emmylou Harris (contributing hazy background vocals to Morning's dirt-road blues) and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner, who lays down some hell-raising guitar to give Urn's thick, cinematic emotronica an industrial sheen. Both records end in emancipated hope, but given Oberst's songwriting talent, the gritty road traveled to get there (especially on the sonic adventures of Urn) is the best part of the vice-littered journey.

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