After Omaha, Nebraska’s Bright Eyes blew up in the mainstream thanks to The O.C. (something Seth Cohen later even complained about – QRO’s Music of The O.C.), frontman Conor Oberst became one of the most divisive figures in alternative music. His alt-folk vocals & lyricism evoked the title ‘the next Dylan’ (never a good thing, even if you’re as well-loved as Kurt Cobain…), making him a polarizing figure, and not in the political sense that he had wished (in fact, his participation in the 2004 ‘Vote For Change’ tour and performance of his “When the President Talks To God” on Tonight Show with Jay Leno earned him shrugs out of the center & right, and mockery out of liberal outlets from The New Republic to Saturday Night Live – QRO Indie on Late Night TV). Instead, while some cherished him as their soulful voice, others derided Oberst for banal lyrics & sound. This held true from 2005’s I’m Awake, It’s Morning to 2007’s Cassadega (QRO review), and even when he left Bright Eyes & longtime Omaha label Saddlecreek for Merge Records on last year’s Conor Oberst. And now, despite furthering his shift towards country pop/rock, not to mention embracing his backing line-up, ‘The Mystic Valley Band’, to the point where many wrote & sang on the new Outer South, Conor Oberst is still Conor Oberst: maker of songs that sound sweet & true on first listen, but quickly belie a complete lack of depth.
Roughly two-thirds of Outer South is written (or co-written) & sung by Oberst. For the most part, he has a country-rock persona akin to Ryan Adams or Bryan Adams, with catchy blues-country good times delivering lame lyrics and thin skill on such tracks as “Slowly (Oh So Slowly)”, “To All the Lights In the Windows” and “Cabbage Town”. Occasionally the up-tempo fun & catch is enough to make one enjoy, like with “Spoiled”, but there’s a lot of weak words, from meaningless ‘it sounded cool’ lines such as “death by Trojan Horse” to the banal political criticism that got him so mocked by the literate left, like on “Nikorette” and especially the wanna-be Dylan rock “Roosevelt Room” (Oberst’s refrain of “What good are you?” is unintentionally funny). His stripped, sad numbers like “Ten Women”, “White Shoes”, and “Worldwide” aren’t nearly as fresh as Wide Awake’s breakthrough single “First Day of My Life” once was. And the penultimate “I Got the Reason #2” is supposed to be some lifting up from the ground country anthem-rock, but just fails to raise anything (note: musicians should not expect to connect with the people if they reference seeing themselves in Rolling Stone…).
Mystic Valley guitarists Nik Freitas and Taylor Hollingsworth, plus drummer Jason Boegel, contribute two songs each, writing & singing, to Outer South (keyboardist Nate Walcott co-wrote “Slowly” with Oberst, and bassist Macey Taylor sings the Oberst-written “Worldwide”). Of the three, Hollingsworth is easily the worst: “Air Mattress” has cheesy lyrics, cheesy rhythm, and the cheesiest Casio keys ever, while closer “Snake Hill” is a nasal, annoying attempt at country/folk songwriting. Not even the most loyal of Oberst-lovers could say something good about Hollingsworth’s pieces. Freitas is middling and forgettable with the pian-y “Big Black Nothing” and swing/sway “Bloodline”, though neither is unenjoyable. Boesel’s vocals on the twang-y “Difference Is Time” are certainly sub-Oberst, and while there’s some dark alt-country strength to Boesel’s “Eagle On a Pole”, he mars it with some jarring, high, stop/start shouts of “Why? / Why not?” (as The Replacements once said, “Don’t Ask Why” – QRO reissue review). It’s not as bad as when Rivers Cuomo let the rest of the band take the lead on one song each for the last Weezer record (QRO review), but at it’s best, just help push Outer South to a too long sixteen tracks.
In this ‘era of Obama’, Conor Oberst was bound to continue, and even up, his shift away from the stripped, alt-cute folk that first got him notice, and, on the face of it, going alt-country/rock would make a lot of sense (and it was at least nice of him to acknowledge his backing band so much). But ‘on the face of’ is Oberst’s problem: he’s a lot better if you don’t look too deep and notice the shallowness to his music. And now he’s moved into a genre already steeped in shallow sounds.
