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Rating: Everything about Conor Oberst is meant to irritate me: there was the interview with himself that closed "Fevers And Mirrors" (and not even a good interview), the interminable minutes that opened "Lifted..." (7 frankly unlistenable minutes), the (fake) timing mistakes of "False Advertising." The 15 minutes of distorted guitar that closed the debut "Letting Off The Happiness" were also designed to irritate me, even though it was already quite raw on its own. If we then add a considerable presumption and such confidence in his own talent that makes him feel right to publish every triviality and various amenities (through avalanches of singles, EPs, collections, parallel projects, and assorted collaborations), there's enough to breed hatred in the listener already quite frustrated by the current dispersive overproduction. Then you also find out that the new album is actually a double album, and he didn't even bother to combine them, so you really pay double; that the first is a typical "Bright Eyes" sound but the second winks (no less) at electronics. You discover that the two singles drawn from the two discs have respectively jumped to the first and second positions on Billboard, and for us, unlucky and romantic underground enthusiasts, we who stimulate our minds with Fugazi but also with Karate, all this acts like a crucifix to Count Dracula. And yet.
And yet then you listen to "Lua" and what can you do - love is blind. It's pure talent that Oberst distills, tons of words without interruption on folk-rock scores, what can come out if a little arrogant brat who grew up in the countryside of Nashville moves to New York and there, in the company of the best of that underground we boast about (Emmylou Harris, Nick Zinner of "Yeah Yeah Yeahs," Matt Maginn of "Cursive," members of "The Good Life" and "Postal Service," even Maria Taylor of "Azure Ray"), projects himself entirely into the creation of the perfect chamber pop, something steeped in lyricism and obsessive and depressed melodies, all in an orgy of screams and sonic assaults, whispered laments, and synthetic beats. It's the folk that lends its heart to rock and falls in love with it ("We are nowhere and it's now"), it's the alt.country of "Poison Oak" that splendidly becomes retro in "Road to Joy," with its scores of cymbals, winds, and piano carpets. It's the female voice chasing love in spastic blues ("Landlocked Blues"), it's the blues itself abandoning every frenzy and becoming a painful litany ("First Day Of My Life"). It's the primitive terror of "At The Bottom Of Everything," with its furious percussion.
In the second disc, the impression is indeed weaker, with less marked ("Gold Mine Gutter") or more marked ("Ship in a Bottle") references to that electronics that courts the guitars - somewhat trendy in recent years. Nothing outstanding (probably a rough and bristly "Take It Easy," the drumwork of "Gold Mine Gutter," the maracas drowned in the beats of "Arc Of Time"), the rest honest apprenticeship work: after all, it's material that the youngster still has to properly assimilate.
All we have to do is wait for the next masterpiece (synthetic, naturally) that "Digital Ash In A Digital Urn" prematurely heralded, and in the meantime console ourselves with the good old way that so often made us fall in love, and to which we gladly lend our hearts even now that "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" is playing.
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