Conor Oberst has shared a third track off his upcoming album ‘Upside Down Mountain’, and I argued with myself the whole afternoon, should I even mention it? Or not? It’s not a bad song, but let’s just say I haven’t fallen in love with it? I don’t hate it at all either, so it is even more irrelevant to write about it. There is a good chorus, with semi-George Harrison-guitars and nice back-up vocals followed by some weird energetic guitars, punching the songs several times, and it may be why the song is called ‘Kick’? It’s actually about Kathleen Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter,… after a few repeats, it has some potential to grow on you, but I won’t expect too much of it. So, I am getting a bit confused, is this album a Bright Eyes or a Conor Oberst album? It is sold as a solo album, but musically I don’t see much difference with ‘The People’s Key’, should I? Yes I should because Conor said this to The Line Of Best Fit:
‘The way I tend to work or feel creatively is normally a reaction to the last thing I’ve finished. If I do one thing for a while, my next impulse is to try and do something different.’
Okay, but is it really different? I guess he is talking about the lyrics, no more shell game or game at all,… the song is about the Kennedys, there is no esoteric secret to decode, no mysterious and puzzling lyrics. Yes this is exactly what he says in the same interview:
‘Sometimes creativity works like a pendulum too and you go back the other way, to a place you may have found yourself before. I think I tried to go back to an older way of songwriting with this album. With The People’s Key, I tried to wrap my lyrics in a cryptic code that people would have to decipher to understand. I guess you could say this one’s more direct in that way.’
And if you wanted more explanation about the album, despite its straightforward meaning, Conor gives it to us:
‘The idea of Upside Down Mountain, even the title itself, is that we’re all alone in our own minds, our own internal mountaintops or universes’.
‘Life is about making connections and all these forces of being connected but then at the end of it, for better or worse, you’ll always be in your mind and I’ll always be in my mind and there’s no changing that. You have to strive to come to terms with things and keep going forward’,…. says Conor Oberst the philosopher. ‘Upside Down Mountain’ will be released on May 20th via Nonesuch, and you can listen to ‘Kick’ below.
