Did Conor Oberst Eyes make the best and worst albums of his career at the same time?

pass.

Easy/Lucky/Free is an awful, awful closer.

im beginning to change my mind about digital ash tho, its really not that bad. i fucking hated the album when i first heard it, but im beginning to think its a bit more *real* than im wide awake...

now, what i mean by this is that, quite simply, the singer of Digital Ash is much more critical of his own hypocricies, be they romantic (Take it Easy) or chemical (hit the switch). there are no tracks like this on Im wide awake, all but part of "we are nowhere and its now" is awash in this pontificating of the sermon titled "to love and to be loved".

in summary, i dont think rock music has seen such a messianic personality since Bono. you can just see the singer of The Unforgetable Fire blushing as he listens to Road to Joy.

I'm trying to imagine Conor Oberst in the Garden of Gethsamane going, "Yeah, I don't know."

Nation Planning Surprise Party to Cheer Up Conor Oberst

OMAHA, NE—American citizens are coordinating efforts to lift the spirits of wünderkind singer-songwriter Conor Oberst, sources reported Monday. "I saw Conor's picture in a Spin article about Bright Eyes, and he just looked so down," said Lindsey Keisner of Youngstown, OH, one of the party's 4,000 planners. "The country feels really bad that he's going through such a rough spell, so next Friday, everyone who can should meet in Omaha with balloons, funny cards, and silly little gag gifts." Britt Daniel from Spoon will lure Oberst to Omaha by asking him to overdub some vocals.

And JD from CDepot already went this route, so ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I don't really want to hear what Conor has to say these days

Dude, maybe you shouldn't buy (or take promo copies of) the album. Isn't there a Rob Thomas b-side you could cream over instead? Why do you bother with an opinion here?

*nerf*

But Fevers and Mirrors is better than either of those two - narcissistic, self-mocking radio interview notwithstanding.

i agree that fevers and mirrors is the best thing he's ever done, and that radio interview is part of the reason why.

people are really missing the boat on this guy. Yeah, yeah, he is sad, but more importantly he is in certain key ways a complete megalomaniac. and there is nothing wrong with this, certain types of artists, musicians and writers NEED to be that way to get anything interesting done. its hard to imagine Bright Eyes without the Oberstian Hype Machine that surrounds it constantly. unfortunately Conor has something of an artistic, indie-based concience, so instead of actually being interviewed by someone, he had to orchestrate the whole thing (not that he was really fooling anyone).

that said, since Mr. Oberst has become successful his lyrical content has begun to show some almost evangelical need to "speak for his generation" i.e. falling for every New Dylan trap imaginable. he seems to feel that the battle has been won, he is a success, has sincere obsessive fans, his albums debut on the bilboard charts, so obviously his megalomania MUST be justified.

i dunno, theres more to this, but i have to go to class.

Also, JD, your comment just above is really otm. Isn't megalomania what pop music is all about? Don't people (like me) spend hours and hours reading books about Dylan, fascinated by his abrasive charisma?

(No way am I saying Oberst is in the Bobby D league, btw)

I thought, and think, that Wide Awake is an amazingly strong, consistent album, one that I like more now than I did a week after I bought it. It is not groundbreaking or anything -- actually, it's very unoriginal musically -- and it suffers for all those "touring sucks" songs, but at the end of the day the only track I don't enjoy listening to is "First Day," and that's the one he's getting radio play with. And it's not just me -- my hipster daughter, despite outright scorn for the Oberst hype machine, and despite having listened to him regularly for years (but never especially caring about him), fell head-over-heels in love with Wide Awake.

Digital Ash is a weirder beast. It took me a lot longer to start to like it. It more pompous and overblown, and for all the bleeps and dits it is almost (but not quite) as musically retro as Wide Awake. Mainly, though, its problem is two or three (but not more than that)really crappy songs that break the flow, and having a whole bunch of songs that contain way too many abstract nouns. When I got enough of a handle on the record to edit out what I wasn't liking, I found that I really enjoyed it. The points where it intersects with Wide Awake (e.g., Lua / Take It Easy) make it more interesting. As a six-song EP, Digital Ash would have been stunning. I sense that these songs spent less time percolating than the Wide Awake songs; they may be better after he spends some time performing them (or the next set will).

Anyway, I am really tired of the Oberst backlash. The kid is ambitious. He wants to write Meaningful songs; the rockist in me appreciates that. He wants an actual career and an audience, not just a reputation and a cult. He's cute, young, jumpable, and not always sober. Given all that, he's going about his business with a fair amount of integrity. This is what a career artist looks like. Bono is not a bad comparison.

this may be the most dead on describtion of his entire catalouge that ive ever heard. only id replace "creepy" with "fascinating"

i really have this wierd view of him as an odd combination of Kurt Cobain, Bono, and some lame 5th rate coffee house singer not worth his wieght in cappucino. ive never been a connor-ite, i find just as much pomposity in his records as i do solace, but i do need to make it clear that his music speaks to me, maybe more than any artist recently, with the exception of Tim Kasher, but thats another story all together...