Look to the clashes between traditional and modern, between acoustic and digital, and that is where you will find I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, the two simultaneously released albums by Omaha indie band Bright Eyes. Released concurrently in late January 2005, Wide Awake and Digital Ash may conflict musically, but they both sound uniquely Oberst. Conor Oberst, that is, singer and songwriter of the band, proclaimed by some as a musical genius, or at least on the road to becoming one.

I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning is much more true to the traditional Bright Eyes sound – laid back, mellow, folkish and acoustic. The album’s first track, “At the Bottom of Everything,” begins with a monologue and breaks into an acoustic song with an almost country feel, expressing his angst towards society’s ideals, vocalizing lines such as “we must blend into the choir/sing as static with the whole/we must memorize nine numbers/and pretend we have a soul/and in this endless race for property and privilege to be won/we must run.” In “We Are Nowhere and It’s Now,” Oberst puts forth delicate harmonies in one of three songs featuring country music legend Emmylou Harris. “Lua” gives us an idea of what life in New York may be like, indulging the listener with a secret, that “when everything is lonely/I can be my own best friend/I get a coffee and the paper/have my own conversations with sidewalk and pigeons and my window reflection.” The album still embraces the slight rough edges featured in previous Bright Eyes releases, yet the occasional awkward pause or wobble of Oberst’s voice only adds to the appeal of the music.

In contrast to Wide Awake, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, with its electronic and polished sound, eliminates the rough edges. Digital Ash’s instrumentals create a sound previously unexplored by Oberst; its percussion is sharp, its guitars are more electronic than acoustic, and much of its synthesized tones are brought on by keyboards. With its steady beat and digital feel, “Arc of Time (Time Code),” describes just that, the arc of time, as well as expresses the general fear of the unknown, with lines like “to the deepest part of the human heart/the fear of death expands/until we crack the code/we have always known/but I could never understand.” Despite its electronic additives, “Hit the Switch” comes close to the traditional Bright Eyes sound that Oberst is edging away from. Were you to trade in the electric guitar for an acoustic one, tone down the drums, and get rid of the digital effects, “Hit the Switch” could be placed on one of the band’s more traditional albums. However, the lyrics in both Digital Ash and Wide Awake are uniquely Conor Oberst, no matter what music is backing it. In “I Believe in Symmetry,” Oberst expresses his admiration of the symmetry of life singing, “how time can move/both fast and slow amazes me/so I raise my glass to symmetry/to that second hand and its accuracy.”

The second hand and its accuracy is an ideal way to describe Digital Ash and to compare it to Wide Awake. Digital Ash, much like the second hand, is sharper and more precise than Wide Awake, which is more relaxed and free flowing. Overall, the two albums compliment each other in their differences and create a balance between the competing forces of digital and acoustic. Oberst’s step out of his norm further proves his immense talent and capability to survive in the ferocities of the music business, something that listeners continue to appreciate.