Categories : Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 2.5 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford |
One Jug of Wine, Two Vessels, the split EP by Bright Eyes and Neva Dinova, was originally released in 2004 and is now being re-released with four new songs. Two of them are good. ‘Someone’s Love’ and ‘I Know You’ are catchy and polished and seem to be about something, whereas the other two tracks, ‘Rollerskating’ and ‘Happy Accident’ are unpersuasive and bland and seem to go absolutely nowhere.
The songs on Vessels are staggered, a Neva Dinova track followed by a Bright Eyes track followed by a Neva Dinova track and so forth. It’s an odd structural choice with little payoff – the listener can’t settle into the mood created by a specific band for more than three to four minutes before it’s disrupted by a completely different vibe set by a completely different band. The transitions are almost jarring, considering how dissimilar the quivering nasal tones of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst are to the soulful country crooning of Neva Dinova’s Jake Bellows. This might have worked better if, as on Bright Eyes’ entry to Post-Parlo’s excellent Home series, one band played first and let the other band take the stage afterward.
The original six tracks are as hit-and-miss as the new ones, though ‘Black Comedy’ and ‘Get Back’ are highlights. The album itself is only semi-commendable: the songwriting is okay, the singing is decent, and everything comes together well enough (save for the disastrous saxophone backing on ‘I’ll Be Your Friend,’ which Oberst and company have had a full six years to correct), but there’s nothing truly remarkable here. Vessels is half good.
