My tragically low amount of Real Music Awareness meant I didn't hear about Bright Eyes until the wave of publicity over his two albums in early 2005. I remember how all the articles talked him up as a "boy genius" and the young singer-songwriter with wisdom far beyond his years and I was saying "Isn't he 24 now?" I know he was barely a teen when he got his start, but you know, Anna Paquin won an Oscar when she was like 11 and nobody talks about her as a child actress now! The happiest I've ever been while reading allmusic.com was when Steve-Tom agreed with my point about Conor's "youth" and then proceeded to son him harder than I've ever seen him son anyone in a review. And Erlewine is a guy who talks about Joey McIntyre the way Limbaugh talks about Reagan, so you can bet he's not all that hard to impress.