KEY POINTS:
This is Conor Oberst's 10th album but he only really came to notice here on numbers eight and nine - his simultaneous 2005 releases of the great I'm Wide Awake, it's Morning and the electronic indulgence that was Digital Ash in a Digital Urn.
This set finds him more focused, most lavishly arranged with strings, and backing singers. But, in its own way, it's a little more freaked-out too.
Quite aside from the apocalyptic undercurrent of it all, there's the disarming effect of opening track Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed), which has the recorded voice of a clairvoyant giving him transamerican travel advice over volcanic strings and on its line "would you agree times have changed?", it seems that "New Dylan" Oberst is answering Old Bob's most famous motto.
The word of Bob reverberates even stronger next, on the infectious fiddle-fired Four Winds and again on the mortality-contemplating If The Brakeman Turns My Way with its shades of Knockin' On Heavens Door/Sweetheart Like You.
But as he lopes through the 13 tracks, Oberst sounds increasingly like his own man (if occasionally also sounding a lot like Joe Strummer on Soul Singer in a Session Band).
While that means there's less of the adolescent energy which made Wide Awake so vital, it also shows that his songcraft has caught up with his sharp-witted lyrical outpourings.
Still, there's still plenty of heat in the thrilling folk-rock swirl on Hot Knives but Cassadaga is defined by its run of elegantly sad-eyed ballads ranging from the Bacharach-esque torch pop of Make a Plan to Love Me to the end-is-nigh epic No One Would Riot for Less which adds something brilliantly spooky to an album which doesn't lack for haunting songs.
Verdict: Young folk-rock star shines brilliantly yet again
Label: Saddle Creek/Polydor
