by Tina WhelskiLeft in the wrong hands, lingering lyrical phrases risk sounding like an 18-wheeler without any brakes, but Conor Oberst, the creative force that is Bright Eyes, proves to be a storyteller who can handle them.
The growing phenomena surrounding the 25-year-old indie kid who shields his heart only with the guitar pressed against his chest, is testament to the effects of his profound word-craft. Oberst released two albums simultaneously this year on his own Saddle Creek label, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, which resulted in tracks from each, “Lua” and “Take it Easy (Love Nothing) to debut at #1 and #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Sales Chart.
No doubt the “Vote for Change Tour” last year which thrust the Omaha troubadour’s wiry presence before the masses alongside Bruce Springsteen and REM helped to build career momentum. But what’s earned Oberst comparisons to Bob Dylan and secured his credibility is a body of prolific work, now six albums strong, bursting with evocative poetry.
On I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Oberst holds close to his acoustic roots, but on the electrified Digital Ash In A Digital Urn he alters his dreamy quality to uncover a different shade of sensitivity. Lyrical prowess remains stronger than ever on both efforts.
In “Ship In a Bottle” from Digital Ash Oberst sings of jamming impossibility into probability: “Don’t you love what is intangible/I have built this ship in a wine bottle.” On I’m Wide Awake, “Lua” is a highlight with its simple moonlight strumming and vulnerable seconds: “I can tell you have a heavy heart/I can feel it when we kiss/So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out/ Trying to lift it,” or “If you promise to stay conscious/I will try to do the same/We might die from medication/But we sure killed all the pain/What was normal in the evening/By the morning seems insane.” “Road To Joy” offers a driving twist on Beethoven’s hymn celebrating the brotherhood of man “Ode to Joy,” climaxing in the cry: “No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter/Sometime’s that’s just the most comfortable place.” And “First Day Of My Life” is quintessential Bright Eyes because while Oberst’s brooding browns may at first glance stamp him with a cheerless aura, he remains a hopeful and earnest interpreter of moments, which lifts his music away from sullen to someplace, well “bright.”
The Aquarian Weekly talks to Conor Oberst.
AW: You’ve turned out so much material in a relatively short time, two albums just this year. Do songs come easily to you, in that you need to write because it's more like your lifeline. Or do you work at it?
Conor Oberst: I’ve never found a good routine way to write. A lot of people will say, “I like to play with my guitar for a certain amount of hours a day” and “I spend this amount of time at a keyboard or with a notebook,” but to me it easily starts just with the vocal melody and maybe a couple lines or lyrics and then it’s more a matter of singing it to myself in my head and living with it. It’s easier to write on the go in different places. Eventually I’ll sit down and play guitar and figure out what key I’m singing it in or come up with the chord progressions to go underneath it, but for the most part it’s just a melody. Once I have the melody and can remember it, then I can work on the lyrics over the course of weeks or months or however long I’m daydreaming about the song.
AW: Why release two albums simultaneously?
Oberst: We made the two records more or less back to back. We did the folk record first and it was a really short process by our standards, just a couple of weeks recording a lot of it live. Those were the songs that I had sitting around for a while that had been written over the course of a couple years. Then there were a bunch of these other ideas and these half-finished things that I was working on and Mike Mogis, who’s sort of the other guy in the band, had musical ideas so I guess we were really excited and wanted to work on the Digital Ash record…By the time Digital Ash was almost done it was really apparent they were two different records and in my mind it made a lot of sense just to put them out at the same time.
AW: How do you view the differences between the two?
Oberst: Obviously there are parts of them that overlap as far as what I’m singing about because some of them were conceived roughly around the same time of my life. I think to me, Wide Awake is not necessarily a hopeful record, but more of a rallying, take responsibility for the world around you kind of thing. Be aware and be as present when things happen as you can. It’s just the idea of really stepping forward and embracing everything around you. Digital Ash is a little more dark, more just fearing death and how that pollutes everything.
AW: When did you first discover you had a way with words?
Oberst: I guess I was always drawn to it. I didn’t know how good I was at it. Even before writing songs, I can remember being real young, like eight or nine-years-old and writing little poems or stories or whatever. It’s just something I gravitated to. So once I started playing guitar it was almost an immediate thing. A lot of people concentrate on the music aspect of it, which I will say now I wish I would have been more the type of kid that was sitting in the basement practicing guitar scales. That would be kind of helpful at this point (laughs). At the time it wasn’t what I was in to. It was more like, “Okay I have two chords, so I’m going to make a song with these two chords with all these things I wanted to say.” The early songs that I was writing are similar to now in the sense of just writing about what was on my mind and my life. Granted when I first started doing it I was like twelve years old…
AW: What was one of your earliest songs?
Oberst: There was a song called “Space Invaders” kind of about the video game. It was some comparison between trying to keep the spaceships from blowing up your little satellites and it was about keeping whatever adversity I felt in my life away from me. Your frame of reference is definitely a little different at that point (laughs).
AW: How have you developed artistically from your last album?
Oberst: I guess more from a writing standpoint I value subtlety a lot more these days. I think there’s something nice when you can capture the in-between feelings. It’s easy to articulate those moments of crisis or those moments of pure overwhelming joy or love. Those are sometimes easier to write about and sing about. I think there are so many gray areas and so many endless combinations of human emotion and thought, being a person that’s alive and willing to reflect on life. I think that’s what’s intriguing to me still, to find those in-between moments and try to articulate those.
AW: As your career grows, what is one of the personal benefits?
Oberst: Definitely I’d say the main one is freedom to create. Before, there were always boundaries. Say there might be some piece of equipment we want to get. Before it was like, “Oh, that’s way too much money.” Now if we want to try something we’ll do it and that can come down to money or time or somewhere we want to travel. That’s just great to be able to let the music or the inspiration dictate what you do and where you go and not all the logistical things. Same with live performance. We’re traveling on this tour with a seven-piece band and a concert harp and a pretty elaborate set up as far as instruments. It’s just great to be able to do that and not have to think about cutting corners or how are we going to pull this or that off. Definitely also the chance to meet people. Just to be able to meet people who have helped shape my musical experience throughout my life and get brief insight from someone like Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen or these types of people. It’s like wow, such a privilege and you feel so fortunate.
AW: How much of yourself do you think you’re overtly revealing in your music and how much is gathered from your views of the world at large?
Oberst: I think that’s definitely changed over the years. At first I wasn’t really crafty enough to disguise my life, so I think some of the earlier recordings are really definitely overtly me. But I always felt the idea of writing a song was to convey some feeling or meaning that’s the point of the song or its essence. In order to get to that I think it’s fair enough to use any means necessary, whether it’s a friend’s story or something you read in a book or saw in a movie or a conversation you had or an observation you felt relating to something outside. I think the whole process of creating it is absorbing everything that you take in throughout the day or throughout your life. It all kind of mixes up inside you and comes out in this way that you don’t even, I mean I don’t have control over. At points I don’t even know what aspects of it are about me or about something else. Sometimes there will be a specific line that if you did know me or were privy to a certain situation you’d know what I’m talking about, but another thing I tend to value these days is to be able to write things that are universal that everyone can make their own. I think it’s a higher form of art when you can do that. I’ve been working on that. I still don’t think I’ve got where I would like to be as far as that goes.
AW: Is there a song that’s a favorite to play live right now?
Oberst: Yeah. On this tour we’re playing some old songs and it’s been fun to go back and remember some things from when I was writing them, but I always seem to enjoy playing the new songs the most on any given tour. We have new song called “Napoleon’s Hat” that I really like to play on this tour. It just has a tone to it where it seems a little dark and minor for a while, but then it kind of blossoms. The sun comes out from around the cloud and it twists into a nicer sound by the end. I always like that evolution from the start of a song, where people are like, “Wow this is a true downer” and then by the end it’s not.
Bright Eyes performs at Loews Theatre, Jersey City, NJ on 11/25 & 26.
Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 11/23/05.
Bright Eyes performing "First Day Of My Life."
The growing phenomena surrounding the 25-year-old indie kid who shields his heart only with the guitar pressed against his chest, is testament to the effects of his profound word-craft. Oberst released two albums simultaneously this year on his own Saddle Creek label, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, which resulted in tracks from each, “Lua” and “Take it Easy (Love Nothing) to debut at #1 and #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Sales Chart.
No doubt the “Vote for Change Tour” last year which thrust the Omaha troubadour’s wiry presence before the masses alongside Bruce Springsteen and REM helped to build career momentum. But what’s earned Oberst comparisons to Bob Dylan and secured his credibility is a body of prolific work, now six albums strong, bursting with evocative poetry.
On I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Oberst holds close to his acoustic roots, but on the electrified Digital Ash In A Digital Urn he alters his dreamy quality to uncover a different shade of sensitivity. Lyrical prowess remains stronger than ever on both efforts.
In “Ship In a Bottle” from Digital Ash Oberst sings of jamming impossibility into probability: “Don’t you love what is intangible/I have built this ship in a wine bottle.” On I’m Wide Awake, “Lua” is a highlight with its simple moonlight strumming and vulnerable seconds: “I can tell you have a heavy heart/I can feel it when we kiss/So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out/ Trying to lift it,” or “If you promise to stay conscious/I will try to do the same/We might die from medication/But we sure killed all the pain/What was normal in the evening/By the morning seems insane.” “Road To Joy” offers a driving twist on Beethoven’s hymn celebrating the brotherhood of man “Ode to Joy,” climaxing in the cry: “No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter/Sometime’s that’s just the most comfortable place.” And “First Day Of My Life” is quintessential Bright Eyes because while Oberst’s brooding browns may at first glance stamp him with a cheerless aura, he remains a hopeful and earnest interpreter of moments, which lifts his music away from sullen to someplace, well “bright.”
The Aquarian Weekly talks to Conor Oberst.
AW: You’ve turned out so much material in a relatively short time, two albums just this year. Do songs come easily to you, in that you need to write because it's more like your lifeline. Or do you work at it?
Conor Oberst: I’ve never found a good routine way to write. A lot of people will say, “I like to play with my guitar for a certain amount of hours a day” and “I spend this amount of time at a keyboard or with a notebook,” but to me it easily starts just with the vocal melody and maybe a couple lines or lyrics and then it’s more a matter of singing it to myself in my head and living with it. It’s easier to write on the go in different places. Eventually I’ll sit down and play guitar and figure out what key I’m singing it in or come up with the chord progressions to go underneath it, but for the most part it’s just a melody. Once I have the melody and can remember it, then I can work on the lyrics over the course of weeks or months or however long I’m daydreaming about the song.
AW: Why release two albums simultaneously?
Oberst: We made the two records more or less back to back. We did the folk record first and it was a really short process by our standards, just a couple of weeks recording a lot of it live. Those were the songs that I had sitting around for a while that had been written over the course of a couple years. Then there were a bunch of these other ideas and these half-finished things that I was working on and Mike Mogis, who’s sort of the other guy in the band, had musical ideas so I guess we were really excited and wanted to work on the Digital Ash record…By the time Digital Ash was almost done it was really apparent they were two different records and in my mind it made a lot of sense just to put them out at the same time.
AW: How do you view the differences between the two?
Oberst: Obviously there are parts of them that overlap as far as what I’m singing about because some of them were conceived roughly around the same time of my life. I think to me, Wide Awake is not necessarily a hopeful record, but more of a rallying, take responsibility for the world around you kind of thing. Be aware and be as present when things happen as you can. It’s just the idea of really stepping forward and embracing everything around you. Digital Ash is a little more dark, more just fearing death and how that pollutes everything.
AW: When did you first discover you had a way with words?
Oberst: I guess I was always drawn to it. I didn’t know how good I was at it. Even before writing songs, I can remember being real young, like eight or nine-years-old and writing little poems or stories or whatever. It’s just something I gravitated to. So once I started playing guitar it was almost an immediate thing. A lot of people concentrate on the music aspect of it, which I will say now I wish I would have been more the type of kid that was sitting in the basement practicing guitar scales. That would be kind of helpful at this point (laughs). At the time it wasn’t what I was in to. It was more like, “Okay I have two chords, so I’m going to make a song with these two chords with all these things I wanted to say.” The early songs that I was writing are similar to now in the sense of just writing about what was on my mind and my life. Granted when I first started doing it I was like twelve years old…
AW: What was one of your earliest songs?
Oberst: There was a song called “Space Invaders” kind of about the video game. It was some comparison between trying to keep the spaceships from blowing up your little satellites and it was about keeping whatever adversity I felt in my life away from me. Your frame of reference is definitely a little different at that point (laughs).
AW: How have you developed artistically from your last album?
Oberst: I guess more from a writing standpoint I value subtlety a lot more these days. I think there’s something nice when you can capture the in-between feelings. It’s easy to articulate those moments of crisis or those moments of pure overwhelming joy or love. Those are sometimes easier to write about and sing about. I think there are so many gray areas and so many endless combinations of human emotion and thought, being a person that’s alive and willing to reflect on life. I think that’s what’s intriguing to me still, to find those in-between moments and try to articulate those.
AW: As your career grows, what is one of the personal benefits?
Oberst: Definitely I’d say the main one is freedom to create. Before, there were always boundaries. Say there might be some piece of equipment we want to get. Before it was like, “Oh, that’s way too much money.” Now if we want to try something we’ll do it and that can come down to money or time or somewhere we want to travel. That’s just great to be able to let the music or the inspiration dictate what you do and where you go and not all the logistical things. Same with live performance. We’re traveling on this tour with a seven-piece band and a concert harp and a pretty elaborate set up as far as instruments. It’s just great to be able to do that and not have to think about cutting corners or how are we going to pull this or that off. Definitely also the chance to meet people. Just to be able to meet people who have helped shape my musical experience throughout my life and get brief insight from someone like Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen or these types of people. It’s like wow, such a privilege and you feel so fortunate.
AW: How much of yourself do you think you’re overtly revealing in your music and how much is gathered from your views of the world at large?
Oberst: I think that’s definitely changed over the years. At first I wasn’t really crafty enough to disguise my life, so I think some of the earlier recordings are really definitely overtly me. But I always felt the idea of writing a song was to convey some feeling or meaning that’s the point of the song or its essence. In order to get to that I think it’s fair enough to use any means necessary, whether it’s a friend’s story or something you read in a book or saw in a movie or a conversation you had or an observation you felt relating to something outside. I think the whole process of creating it is absorbing everything that you take in throughout the day or throughout your life. It all kind of mixes up inside you and comes out in this way that you don’t even, I mean I don’t have control over. At points I don’t even know what aspects of it are about me or about something else. Sometimes there will be a specific line that if you did know me or were privy to a certain situation you’d know what I’m talking about, but another thing I tend to value these days is to be able to write things that are universal that everyone can make their own. I think it’s a higher form of art when you can do that. I’ve been working on that. I still don’t think I’ve got where I would like to be as far as that goes.
AW: Is there a song that’s a favorite to play live right now?
Oberst: Yeah. On this tour we’re playing some old songs and it’s been fun to go back and remember some things from when I was writing them, but I always seem to enjoy playing the new songs the most on any given tour. We have new song called “Napoleon’s Hat” that I really like to play on this tour. It just has a tone to it where it seems a little dark and minor for a while, but then it kind of blossoms. The sun comes out from around the cloud and it twists into a nicer sound by the end. I always like that evolution from the start of a song, where people are like, “Wow this is a true downer” and then by the end it’s not.
Bright Eyes performs at Loews Theatre, Jersey City, NJ on 11/25 & 26.
Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 11/23/05.
Bright Eyes performing "First Day Of My Life."
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