Some years are better than others and 2008 was a killer for me and Conor Oberst.
It didn’t get cooking till July when I went with my friend Bari to “Other Music” -a record store in the music to watch Oberst perform a solo set that simply killed.
A week earlier I had bought Conor Oberst -his first solo album. And though it feels as though it should be slight, a country-rock concept album about a trip from East Coast hipdom to Spanish resurrection- it isn’t slight at all.
Everything is a ” tiny diamond in our memory”, from the on the road “NYC Gone Gone” through the swing and sauciness of “Sausalito” through the broken relationship and abortion (the second time he has tackled the subject) of “Cape Canaveral” and the finishing end DT to deliverance “Milk Thistle”.
The sound is the country swing rock of a Burrito brothers -it’s like a trick he learnt on the Motion Sickness album paying with a casual yet control blend; a grown up teenage coming of age filled with stories and sorrow and yet always with the music, with the band concept to pull you back.
About a month after the “Other Music” set I went to Toad’s Place to hear a full set and though Conor’s voice sounded pretty ravished, the Mystic Valley Band carried him all the way to the finish line. It was a great set because of its sense of community not despite. The group ethos so instilled in Conor, since his earliest days, since he was a twelve year old being compared to Dylan had rewarded him with this album and this band.
Two other songs. “Breezy” and “I’ve Got A Reason # 2”. The former is a song of death and it is not hidden in poetry and art, it cuts further and deeper and more immediately -maybe because we know who Conor is singing about (Sabrina Lane Duim) .The latter was my favorite song of 2008: Rolling Stone were happy with their namecheck, probably because they don’t speak English,. Me, I thought the controlled luddite leading to a long list of eligible and handsome men wanting to lay her on the table of the elements was as cross referenced and thrilling as lyric and sound ever can get.
Conor the album can stand with GP. Not just the consistency of sound and song, but the consistency of vision which, as opposed to the somewhat arrogrant work with Monsters Of Folk, never thought anything is a subsitute for directness. The vision is so organic on Conor it lives on and builds to a sense of how life, Conor’s life, is rhythmed. It, unlike MOF, has the balance of truth.
Conor felt it as well.
He couldn’t stop himself. He immediately went back in the study and split an album with the Mystic Valley band. And then went back on tour, where he was OK not great at Terminal 5. And then recorded a disappointing album as MOF (though Conor’s songs were between good and great) and was really not good live with the band. And that was 2009.
2010 finds two first class songs as Bright Eyes, and an upcoming concert at Austin City Limits. Remour has it, conor is working on a new album with Bright Eyes.
And 2008 is ever more a tiny diamond in our memories