Conor Oberst
(Merge)
It’s hard to say what Conor Oberst stands to gain from going solo when his real band is essentially a solo project with two semi-regular members, one of whom, Nate Wolcott, made the trip to Mexico to join him in the Mystic Valley Band. So did Andy LeMaster, who’s played on several Bright Eyes records, co-producing here with Oberst, and a drummer, Jason Boesel, who toured with Bright Eyes in 2005.
What really makes it hard to differentiate this album from a Bright Eyes record, though, is that it would have felt so natural – perfect, even — as the followup to 2005’s I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning, Oberst’s finest hour. Most songs share that album’s understated folk and country shadings, from a leadoff cut whose haunting blend of acoustic guitar and foot percussion can’t help but feel like a White Album flashback, to the even more intimate “Milk Thistle,” a closing track that finds him vowing “I’ll keep death on my mind like a heavy crown.”
It’s when he loosens up and lets the album rock a little, though, that Oberst really finds his groove, from the swaggering Dylan moves of “Get-Well-Cards” (with its promise to “braid your hair like a sister”) to the post-Replacements rockabilly kicks of “I Don’t Want To Die (In The Hospital),” with Walcott channeling the Killer on piano. Given his mystical leanings of late, it’s good to hear him let his hair down on a genuinely funny track in which his pleas of “I don’t want to die in the hospital” are followed by “you gotta take me back outside.” A few more lines like that and he might be his generation’s early Dylan after all.
Standout Tracks: “Cape Canaveral,” “I Don’t Want To Die (In the Hospital)” A. WATT
