Pages tagged “Conor Oberst”

Here's the list of my top albums of 2008, which I begrudgingly cobbled together after being told, no, I was not allowed to vote for last year's Everybodyfields album in all ten spots. Don't believe anyone who tells you music journalists have it easy! Life is hard.

It's been a little over two years since M. Ward released his last solo album, Post War, but the singer/songwriter/producer has been anything but idle in the interim. He's released an EP, lent his guitar, voice and/or production skills to more than a few artists covered in Paste, contributed to a trio of film soundtracks, made his acting debut, and become a world-famous pronoun, alongside Zooey Deschanel.

Former prodigy ventures to Mexico to record transitional album without longtime producer

For half his life, 28-year-old Conor Oberst has been schlepping around a prodigy’s burden. His early coffeehouse gigs and his group Commander Venus stirred up an unheard-of amount of notoriety for a 10th-grade songwriter from Omaha, and then he and his friends followed by forming the band Bright Eyes (among several others) and prosperous clubhouse label Saddle Creek. Ever since, Oberst has served as a skinny, bobbed and bobbing target for those aiming at superiority in the rock-taste status sweepstakes.

After recording the last Bright Eyes album for over a year in six studios, with well over two-dozen different musicians, Conor Oberst wanted to simplify. So earlier this year he followed the time-honored rock tradition of holing up in an exotic locale to make a record without interruption.

Listening to the upcoming album by Lucinda Williams, Little Honey, I was thrilled to come across the voice of Elvis Costello on a song called "Jailhouse Tears." Country/rock duets have a pretty long history and even some commercial success (see Jon Bon Jovi with Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles). But recently, they've also gotten pretty damn cool. Here are the best country/rock duets of recent years (and a few don't even involve Emmylou Harris):

I recently spoke with Conor Oberst about his new self-titled album that he recorded down in Mexico for our International Issue which just hit the newsstand. The focus of the story was on his trip, but the conversation strayed onto two of my favorite topics, religion and politics. I asked him about the numerous Christian references coming from an atheist. Here was his response:

It's a bird... it's a plane... It's a slow-singing, guitar-slinging, floppy-haired supergroup! My Morning Jacket lead crooner Jim James just announced in a recent Rolling Stone interview that he's recording an album with buddies/former collaborators M. Ward and Conor Oberst.

Artistic name changes are not reserved for such pop icons as he who dons purple crushed velvet or the hip-hop mogul who helms the Making the Band series. Quite the contrary, we've learned. This August, the brooding alt-indie artist sometimes known as Bright Eyes plans to release his first recording as Conor Oberst since the late '90s.  And in support of his self-titled LP, Mr. Oberst will satiate listeners with a new website and international tour dates.

I've got three interviews scheduled for today. First up at 11a.m. is Ben Sollee, one of the best new singer/songwriters I've heard this year. He's a cellist, who plays with The Sparrow Quartet, along with Bela Fleck, Abigail Washburn and Casey Driessen. They're headed to Beijing this summer to play some gigs around the Olympic Games. He's also got his first solo album, Learning To Bend, coming out a week from today.