This is not a fully fledged rant, it is a review. But the review leads me onto topics that irritate the shit out of me, so you are going to have to put up with a bit of anoyed, off-topic rambling if you read all this lot. If, on the other hand, you can’t be arsed then here is the short and sweet review: not very good; and you can skip to the bottom for an mp3 to download. I can’t be much fairer than that.

For most of us Bright Eyes burst onto the scene in early 2005 when he released I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning and the only slightly less excellent Digital Ash in a Digital Urn simultaneously. The thing is, as true fans knew, Bright Eyes didn’t exactly spring up from nowhere – he had a history.

Or, more importantly, he had a back catalogue. ‘Oooh!’ said his label execs to one another, positively faint with pleasure as images of large stacks of dollar bills and oral treats from executive gentleman’s companions swam before their eyes. ‘Now that our little chappie is popular, people will give us their money and we will be rich beyond our wildest dreams, the world will be our oyster and that walking celebrity spaff-bucket Kim Karda-wotsit will want to shag us!’

Well actually, that’s unfair. Conor Oberst was, and to his and their credit remains, signed to indie label Saddle Creek Records. They are neither big, nor evil, but they learned a rather slippery trick from the biggies. Having just coughed up two albums’ worth of superb new material there was precious little chance of Mr. Oberst cranking out anything else for quite some time, so they were left with the conundrum of how to capitalise on what, for an indie label, was a fairly unusual level of public interest in one of their hitherto rather obscure artists.

The answer: live recordings and b-sides – those time-honoured fleecing weapons that every big label brandishes with ruthless efficiency – could potentially be wielded here rather effectively. So they released, at carefully staggered intervals, two albums. One called Motion Sickness: Live Recordings and another called Noise Floor: Rarities 1998-2005. The thing is, the majority of live recordings are just like the record, but with crap sound and b-sides tend not to make the real albums because they’re mostly rubbish. These obviously aren’t cast iron rules, but they are pretty good guidelines.

In this case they were indeed shit, I was fleeced of thirty quid and I was hugely negatively disposed towards the new record before I’d even heard a single song. On the other hand, if they’d just left well enough alone (not easy, I understand, when everyone’s clamouring for your hot new act) then I would have been drooling at the thought of the new album like Pavlov’s Dogs in Winchester Cathedral on Easter Sunday*.

As it is, I don’t actually think the new one is very good. It’s got a certain dadrock quality to it, without the scratchiness and raw emotion of his earlier stuff. But I don’t even know, any more, if I dislike it because the music doesn’t agree with me, or if I’m incapable of liking it because I have been so annoyed by the dash for cash by Saddle Creek.

Ultimately, even if an artist is popular, you can’t justify abandoning the quality control. Releasing rubbish will surely damage the artist more in the long run than will be gained by the short term influx of cash for an inferior product. I don’t know, maybe you lot liked those two filler albums more than I did, but I thought they were shit, cynical and completely needless.

Bright Eyes – Middleman

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*Do they ring the bells a lot on Easter Sunday? I assume so, but I have no idea so would you mind just pretending they do? That makes it much funnier.