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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.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
06 Hit the Switch (04:47)
I'm staring out into that vaccum again
From the back porch of my mind
The only thing thats alive
I'm all there is
And I start attacking my vodka, stab the ice with my straw
My eyes have turned red as stoplights, you seem ready to walk
You know I'll call you eventually, when I wanna talk
'Til then you're invisible
'Cause theres a switch that gets hit and it all stops making sense
And in the middle of drinks, maybe the fifth or the sixth
I'm completely alone at a table of friends
I feel nothing for them. I feel nothing, nothing
Well, I need a break from the city again
I think I'll ship myself back west
I got a friend there, she says, "hey, any time."
Unless that offers expired, I have been less than frequent
She's under no obligation to indulge every whim
And I'm so ungrateful, I take, she gives and forgives
And I keep forgetting it
And each morning she wakes with a dream to describe
Something lovely that bloomed in her beautiful mind
I said "I'll trade you one for two nightmares of mine
I have some where I die, I have some where we all die."
I'm thinking of quitting drinking again
I know I said that a couple times
And I'm always changing my mind, well, I guess I am
But theres this burn in my stomach and theres this pain in my side
And when I kneel at the toilet
And the mornings clean light pours in through the window
Sometimes I pray I don't die
I'm a goddamn hypocrite
But the night rolls around and it all starts making sense
There is no right way or wrong way, you just have to live
And so I do what I do and at least I exist
What could mean more than this?
What would mean more?
Mean more?
Ohhhh
07 I Believe in Symmetry (05:24)
Some plans were made and rice was thrown.
A house was built; a baby born.
How time can move both fast
and slow amazes me.
And so I raise my glass to symmetry
...to the second hand and its accuracy...
to the actual size of everything
the desert is the sand.
You can't hold it in your hand.
It won't bow to your demands.
There's no difference you can make.
There's no difference you can make...
And if it seems like an accident
a collage of senselessness
you weren't looking hard enough.
I wasn't looking hard enough at it
An argument for consciousness,
the instinct of the blind insect w
ho makes love to the flowerbed and dies in the first freeze. Oh, I want to learn such simple things...
the politics
no, history so what i want and
what i need can finally be the same.
I just got myself to blame...
leave everything up to fate
when there's choices I can make...
when there's choices I can make.
Now my heart needs a polygraph...always eager to pack my bags when I really wanna stay...when I really wanna stay...when I wanna stay.
The arc of time - the stench of sex...
The innocence you can't protect - each quarter note,
each marble step...
Walk up and down that lonely treble clef.
Each one and the next one to arrive.
The argument for consciousness,
the instinct of the blind insect
who never thinks not to accept it's faith...that's faith...
There's happiness in death.
You give to the next one.
You give to the next on down the line.
The levity of longing that instills each dream
inside my head...my morning water
down forget on silver stars, i wish and wish
and wish from one to the next one...
from one to the next right down the line.
You give to the next one.
You give to the next on down the line.
10 Light Pollution (03:16)
John A. Hobson was a good man
He used to loan me books and mic stands
He even got me a subscription
To the Socialist Review
Listening to records in his basement
Old folk songs about the government
"It's love of money, not the market"
He said, "these fuckers push on you"
And freedom yells, it don't cry
Whatever sells will decide
But there's no hell when you die
So don't look so worried
He got a night life, lost his day job
Pushing papers, swinging pendulums
Anything to serve a function
Or to occupy some time
You gotta earn this living somehow
You're good as dead without a bank account
But it's funny how alive he felt down
In that unemployment line
With all that trash at his feet
The pools of piss in the street
All of that filthy empathy
For the way we're feeling
The billboards shade
The flags they wave
The anthem was playing loud
The baseball game was letting out
And all at once
he saw the dust
And heard every tiny sound
Got in his truck and turned around
Drove out through the crowd and the cops
Drove out past that center mall
Drove out past that sickening sprawl
Out past that fenced in crawl
And maybe he lost control
Fucking with the radio
But I bet the stars seemed so close
At the end
At the end
At the end
11 Theme From Piñata (03:18)
Well I wish I had a parachute
Cause I'm falling mad for you
I can see the ground approaching now
But I'm not sure what to do
I feel like the piñata
Once you take a swing at me
If you could just crack the shell open
I think inside you would find something sweet
Well I hear you're like a hunter now
Your footsteps in the leaves
And I would gladly leave my hiding place
Yes I'm hoping to be seen
So let your arrow fly and sing
I'm well within your aim
Lay your traps for a thousand miles
And please don't let me escape
Winter came to Omaha
It left us looking like a bride
A million perfect snowflakes now
And no two are alike
So it's hard for me imagining
The flaws in this design
I know debris, it covers everything
And still I am in love with this life
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Other reviews
By holdencaulfield
Conor Oberst is 24 years old (I hate this guy). Talented, sure. And incredibly arrogant.
Behind the sparse and fragile sounds of the first CD, behind the Babel-like cathedral of electronic clamor of the second, is hidden a production as meticulously crafted as that of the latest Britney Spears.
