A series of postmodern plagues—illness, email woes, station server troubles, and generally lackluster late winter releases—have all worked in synergy to keep me both away from good new music and without a means to reliably transmit said music to you all for over a month. But spring tends to bring out great tunes, so hopefully I’ll be able to pick up the pace.
As for the current Track You Should Be Listening To Right Now, I have to emphasize the word “Should.” Because I don’t love Bright Eyes. Maybe because the bandwagon had already started before I heard of Conor Oberst, so as an indie rocker I was naturally (and pretentiously) suspicious…especially of my fellow indie rockers. Maybe I’m just resentful that Oberst has a musical career and even his own label, though he’s younger than I am (this is becoming more of a problem with each passing year, incidentally). And maybe it’s because he’s such a whiny, skinny, emo kid that even the other whiny, skinny, emo kids (all redundant terms, by the way) look at him and go, “Dude, cheer up.”
Recently, he’s simultaneously released two albums, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, the former of which is attempting to be an alt country album (and whose title is a comma splice, which pisses me off). Now anyone with the slightest knowledge about America’s “heartland” knows that any male as pretty as Oberst is, by writing a country album, is just asking to be on the receiving end in an Annie Proulx short story. (Yes, I did just make a cowboy anal sex joke.) But he's gone ahead and written one anyway.
The opening track of IWA,IM, “At the Bottom of Everything,” starts with a spoken-word story intro. It’s pure drivel—Oberst refers to the Pacific Ocean, with stuttering incredulity, as “the biggest ocean on—on planet Earth!”—about a woman on a plane. But then the plane begins to crash, and she wails about what to do, and the man next to her reassures her that they’re going to a better place in a bizarre fashion (“It’s your birthday party. Happy birthday!”). And meanwhile a guitar has started frantically strumming, and suddenly Oberst is the man singing, and he (both of them) break into a song about Paradise that is dark and cheerful and hope-giving at the same time.
It’s utter pathos—you’re being manipulated, blatantly so—but it works. You’re invested. You care about the people on the crashing plane. You care about whether they’ll really make it to Heaven. You hope (and temporarily believe) you will, too. You’ll listen to the song, and even the intro, many times over.
It’s a TYSBLTRN, because you should be listening to it. It’s a great song that you’ll like (though, like me, you may resent that you like it). And even if you don’t dig it, you should at least be able to talk knowledgably about it, because all your other hipster friends already are. Bright Eyes is here to stay. Much of Oberst’s music is good and much of it is not. It’s your call. But whether you like him or not, the next time his name comes up, at least you won’t be guilty of bullshitting. (Listen to “At the Bottom of Everything” here or request it here.)
In the print world, I'm liking Adam Gopnik's piece on Voltaire in the latest New Yorker.
In other news, my mentor, Howard Norman, is giving a reading this Saturday at 6:00 PM at Politics & Prose. I’m probably going if anyone would like to join me (though you have to call my cell, because again, I have no email). I’ll be coming from Terpstock, where I’ll be DJing live before and between sets from about noon to 5:00 PM. It’s the first time I’ve DJed in front of real people in almost 5(!) years, so come on out; it’ll be fun.
