I haven't heard Oberst's war songs, but I've heard quite a number of really bad ones. Joni Mitchell's latest comeback attempt had a couple of realllllly stinky ones. For a rich kid to try singing about poor Iowa farm kids fighting in Iraq, as though he would even deign to speak to one, is the real irony here. But there have been a couple of good songs about the war. My two favorites are Mark Erelli's "Shadowland", and Hamell on Trial's "Don't Kill", which cracks me up every time I hear it.

Anyway.

Thank you for being the only person I've found who shares this sentiment. I have been waiting since about 2003 for the all-consuming blues/folk/country trend sweeping the indie world to finally go the way of the dinosaurs, to no avail. I'm sorry, Pitchfork, that your readers and fans feel the need to constantly worship at the altar of the "rootsy" and the "down-to-earth" as they sip their PBR and strum on acoustic guitars in a pathetic attempt to transcend their upper-class white background towards some kind of imagined blue-collar "authenticity". I'll take Conor's ethereal gothic-tinged "Lover I Don't Have to Love" and "The Calendar Hung Itself" (and even the much-panned Digital Ash album) over his folksy guitar-and-harmonica stuff any day of the week, thanks.

Trust me. I've always been an aficionado of over-raught drama music: American Music Club, Alejandro Escovedo, Spiritualized, PJ Harvey, etc. But Bright Eyes/Connor Oberst was always way, way beyond the pale for me. Christ, give it a break, my man!

Never have I wished I was a Republican so badly....

I am twice Connor Oberst's age, and think of "You Will" as a favorite song. (Though the lyrics except for "you will you will you" are kind of off.) Great melody, and I like that it sounds like he recorded it in a middle school restroom.

I'm just glad that someone of the generation that is actually going to war is writing antiwar songs. I mean, here's what we antiwar types were having to listen to at 2004 Rock the Vote sessions (not that these aren't great songs)-- Eddie Vedder singing the (good lord!) 40-year-old Masters of War, and John Fogerty singing his Vietnam anthem (though, yeah, never so relevant as Bush's term) Fortunate Son. Bout time these young songwriters realized that their former classmates are dying in this second misbegotten war.

So rock on, Bright Eyes, and let's hope someone's listening.

I agree with most of what was written, but by fitting Connor's output to the arc of her own life, the author overlooks a lot of really amazing and unique music. His best writing occurs when he breaks through the personal/political divide as he did with 2005's I'm Wide Awake It's Morning (not mentioned in the piece). "Lua" is as good a confessional as anything he's ever written and "Poison Oak" proved that a maturer Oberst can still bring the histrionics. Maybe it's because I'm younger than the author and maybe it's because I moved to New York, the city he chronicles with that album, at the same time it was released, but even three years out, Wide Awake strikes me as nearly perfect. Listening to "Old Soul Song" still feels like standing at my first war protest and "We are Nowhere and It's Now" feels like last call. I guess my only question to the author is "How is that not the twenty-something album that you've always him to make?"

Not sure why most Bright Eyes/Oberst reviews have to tackle the guy's music with such a personal tone. The music moves some people and it does not others, shame it has to be pushed into a commentary on indie rock or emo or whatever this months label is. Seems strange that Mr. Oberst seems to elicit embarrassment from liberals and constant accusations of false contrived emotion from critics and such. To dismiss it as a fad of the self, as this article does to a lesser extent and Stephen Thomas Erlewine (of allmusic.com) does to a more venomous extent it fundamentally injecting too much of the writer into the review, which is all the more humorous considering the subject here. It's as if reviewers must purge themselves of Mr. Oberst out of embarrassment, which is a shame.

Conor can write a damn good song. His political lyrics may be blunt, but what the hell, "When the President talks to god" was released to a country still recovering from Toby Keith (this weeks news would argue that recovery is still barely realized) and sung on Jay Leno, which is better than most protesters could hope to achieve.

However, the general attitude towards Oberst does a very good job illustrating the general problem with critique. It cannibalizes art and culture until there is nothing left. Look at Shapiro's Barack Obama article tonight, "too much Obama", jesus, can we hyper-analyze ourselves enough? This is why republicans win, because they are too dogmatic to question themselves, whereas intelligent liberals will analyze their thoughts and culture to death. Sad really. Flip flopping can be such a wonderful thing if its actually growth, but god our whole culture seems to have lost consciousness of the benefits of both transformative thought as well as steadfastness, its like one or the other, not perhaps a mesh of the two as the situation would require.

And back to protest music, Conor Oberst's side-project The Desparicidos is without a doubt the best new punk record of this decade. It's the only mall punk record that actually speaks for that genre honestly and intelligently. Ahh the children of white suburbanites, what beautiful music they may. Its just music. If you saw someone singing these songs in a shithole bar, you would probably be impressed. Fuck the machine, love the music.

I bought I'm Wide Awake, etc. after reading all the stellar reviews, and with no clue what a Bright Eyes sounded like. I do like to think tho, that the little weenie Oberst was inspired to name the band while watching the video for Total Eclipse of the Heart, with Bonnie Tyler singing, “turn around, bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart…”. Remember that video, with all those creepy glowing eyes? That was some scary shit right there and likely to lay waste to young Conor’s impressionable mind. I find this an attractive theory, and it comforts me.

I honestly tried to love that album, cuz I paid cash money for it. I gave it a half dozen spins, hoping it would grow out of its amazingly awkward crapness, but it became more painful to listen to with each play. The spousal unit finally snapped and said, “Never ever play that precious, bleating, castrated little sheep in my presence again please, thankyou.” And I was relieved; someone had to say it. I felt blessed when the cd shop paid me three dollars to take it off my hands, for I was sore afraid I would be stuck with it for life. Well, actually, I’d have used it for target practice, I had come to despise it so much.

My conclusion? Someday they will find a cure for Conor Oberst. Until then, many will continue to suffer, despite the best efforts of our doctors and yearly telethons.

Bonus Point: The comment about Vampire Weekend is spot-on if the line is creatively misread as “…disguising it under layers of *felched* African pop”. True dat, since VW are nothing if not the sound of spent creativity being sucked out of the ass end of eighties-era David Byrne and Paul Simon. Talk about your derivatives of derivatives. Damn, what you kids get up to these days.