Word: oberst
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...Conor Oberst is the hottest little indie duckling around. Over the past few years, Oberst’s Bright Eyes project has peddled his singular brand of disingenuous melancholy all the way to the gatekeeper of the musical elite: Maxim’s Blender magazine. His Omaha-based label Saddle Creek have hosted a handful of similarly insipid alt-rockers, many of whom, like The Faint or Rilo Kiley, have recently met Mammon’s warm embrace. Adored by hordes of sobbing alterna-teens, Oberst has generated an elaborate cult of personality that often obscures the mediocrity...
...somehow, much less) than a boy and a guitar: the mix is thick with drums, synthesized instrumentation, and gee-wiz effects. The first track, “Time Code,” opens with two minutes of electronic noodling accompanied by bizarre background panting, presumably from an onanistic Oberst. Just in case the avant wheezing didn’t let you know how arthouse the album is, there are eleven more masturbatory songs of offbeat hooks and carefully gauged dissonance to drive home the point. Unfortunately, no matter how much of his nosecandy fund he throws at studio time, Digital...
...contrast to the whizzing machinery and artifice of Digital Ash, Wide Awake features Bright Eyes’ signature folk-country ballads. Oberst cashes in on his heartland roots to deliver ten tracks of white boy blues, twanging along to song titles like “Old Soul Song” and “Another Travelin’ Song.” While the album is much more singer-songwriter oriented than Digital Ash, many of the songs include a fair amount of accompaniment from the mandolin, the harmonica or the organ. Country legend Emmylou Harris sings back-up vocals...
...from the music of Oh Holy Fools or even Lifted, severely lacking in the deep-blush emotional candor of his earlier work. The single off of I’m Wide Awake, “Lua,” is clearly an attempt to reintroduce that sense of sincerity. Oberst sings “Lua” without any kind of accompaniment, going for the quiet, tortured style he had delivered so effectively on previous albums. And while the song is beautiful, it’s a rough fit with the rest of the album, and feels like much more...
Still, there's little doubt that in his small way, Oberst is a big talent. Major labels have been desperate to sign him, though Oberst (who founded his own label, Saddle Creek) has resisted on the quite correct grounds that they would force him to stick to writing heartbreaking love songs (preferably ones that could be sold for romantic-comedy sound tracks). Oberst deserves some credit for clinging to his idealism. He deserves even more for making sure his new albums are sold separately...