I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

Released alongside the electronic experiments of Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning shows off Conor Oberst’s folksy side, which had matured from fragile and volatile to surprisingly full-blooded. Occasionally joined by Emmylou Harris (whose power-in-vulnerability approach, no doubt, influenced Oberst’s own), Oberst sounds alternately personal and political, angry but openhearted. Most radiant are the ballads, especially the lovelorn “Lua” and the drunken “Land Locked Blues."