Celebrating Conor Oberst in advance of his birthdate tomorrow.
—Ed.
You know you’re in trouble when the most uplifting song on an LP is about a fatal airline crash. And yet in the case of the 2005 LP I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Bright Eyes’ front man Conor Oberst somehow makes it work. This album may not be a mood elevator, but it’s lovely from spiritually charged beginning to political end, thanks in part to Oberst’s excellent lyrics and thanks in part to the melodies, doleful as they often are.
Folk influenced, but with touches of musical discord, “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” left me cold at first, with the exception of the airplane crash classic, “At the Bottom of Everything.” But it slowly grew on me, like fuzzy green mold on the animated corpse of Rod Stewart. Oberst may truck in depression, and his idea of a happy song may involve mass death, but he’s not taking life lying down.
On “Ode to Joy” (which borrows, musically, from Beethoven), for instance, he defiantly faces down the darkness at noon, raging against the futility of war to the accompaniment of some cool guitar feedback before tossing in the great lines, “Well I could have been a famous singer/If I had someone else’s voice/But failure’s always sounded better/Let’s fuck it up boys, make some noise!” If all he’d written in his life were those last two lines, I would still love the man.
“We Are Nowhere and It’s Now” boasts a lovely melody and the vocals of Emmylou Harris, dueting with Oberst. Oberst is falling apart, what with the waitress at his favorite bar looking concerned and the drugs he’s taking giving him a “head full of pesticide.” The trumpet is great, the vocals are transcendental, and somebody else’s suffering has never sounded so good.