Conor Oberst is all hair these days, at least this is how he appeared on stage with his recently reunited post-hardcore project Desaparecidos at the FYF fest on Sunday night.
A bandana around his knee, his long hair covering his face all the time, Conor and his bandmates gave a set charged with a wild energy and many political bites. Desaparecidos could be like Bright Eyes on steroids, after all the voice is the same – except that Oberst is far from being the only one doing the singing – but honestly I hardly recognized him, he didn’t really sound like him, if it wasn’t for some rare emotional vocal tremolos he is known for.
But most of the time, the five men were singing all together, like a rocking anthemic choral, and I couldn’t tell them apart with all that long hair banging. I was hearing the three middle-age men behind me praising the music, saying how good it was, and they weren’t the only ones appreciating the thunderous guitars in full effect and the raging engaged lyrics that they were screaming their heart out
– like the line saying they ‘don’t want to be ashamed to be American’. That was the main point with this band, behind the punk riffs, the rocking loudness, the fury of the guitars and the perpetual motion, there was the strong political engagement which could explain why the ‘the disappeared ones' have reformed in these political troubled times.
If you like your Conor all emo and singing about the torment of love, I guess you shouldn't expect too much from Desaparecidos, ideologically, the band is closer to Rage Against the Machine than any other Oberst’s projects. They rose a few angry far-left fists against everything, from Arizona’ immigration law to Bradley Manning’s arrest. I must confess I had to do some research about this guy, who was arrested in 2010 on suspicion of having passed classified material to WikiLeaks. Conor dedicated a song to Bradley, and declared with his most authoritarian tone:
‘This goes out to an American hero, Bradley Manning, who is held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day for telling people what our country is really up to… It’s a disgrace to our country … and this also goes out to President Obama: you should not only let that American hero out of prison, you should throw him a big fucking parade in New York City.’
And with another speech about awful and racist Arizona’s immigration law, proclaiming heartfelt ideas such as ‘we all belong to this earth’, and pointing out the ridiculousness of a law based on ‘frivolous things’, just before singing the highly political rocker ‘Marikkkopa’, the tone was given. They even covered ‘Spanish Bombs’ of The Clash, that Conor described as one of his favorite bands.
All this leftist political talk and lyrical attacks could have been a risk, but the crowd was shearing in approval, and behind the intense pounding riffs, the rowdy and violent body movements, the ferocious guitar assaults, and all that hair in the face, Desaparecidos, just like the Swedish hardcore band Refused had done it the previous day, was basically giving the tone of the FYF fest, the Fuck Yeah Fest.