Cover Art Highs and Lows: Outer South - Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band

LOW

Outer South
Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band
Merge Records.

Band photo-shoots are commonly embarrassing in that staged, we-wish-we-were-elsewhere look that's usually visible. It’s a hell of a lot worse when the band-members look incredibly uncomfortable / pissed-off to be in each-other's company. Dude on the left looks relatively at ease, probably because he scored the best chair, but that couch is cracklin’ with leg-crossed uncertainty, particularly the plaid-shirted fellow giving Conor a wary look that is either asking “I'm in the band, right?” or “pink sweatshirt… really…?”. This group looks more likely to have been pulled in from the street as individual pedestrians asked to review advertisements, or even out-of-touch high-school friends forced together at a funeral reception, than a close-knit band. And Conor’s going to pretty extreme lengths to pretend he’s not there. Then you hear Outer South and it all makes sense.

Outer South - Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band

Outer South

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band
Merge Records.

SCQ Rating: 48%

Well, I put this off as long as I could. Since its release, I’ve spent the majority of these four intervening months in denial that Outer South really arrived in stores. I mean, in its current form; with half of its sixteen tracks written and performed by backing-band members, in such ragged condition spawning an unedited seventy-minutes, and featuring such atrocious cover-art. With each of these encroaching details unveiled prior to its May release, I watched my window-of-hype slowly shrink… and don’t dare call that prejudice! For the man who has singlehandedly (forget Mike Mogis) forged his demons onto recordings with the scorching intimacy that earned die-hard fans and divisive acclaim, the very premise of Outer South was an uphill battle from the beginning. If last year’s Conor Oberst was an underwhelming grower, it sympathetically foreshadowed the letdown this follow-up dishes out.

Establishing itself along the same desert highway that charmed us on last year’s ‘Sausalito’, Outer South lazes forward with ‘Slowly (Oh So Slowly)’ and ‘To All the Lights in the Windows’; the former a hokier take on his alt-country self-titled, the latter a slight – but elongated – improvement. From there, Conor feels he’s set an appropriate pace and steps back to let the Mystic Valley Band sing a few… and inadvertently slaps his fanbase across the face with the Cars-ish, synth-pop embarrassment of ‘Air Mattress’ and the Wallflowers cover-band blues of ‘Bloodline’. The Mystic Valley Band manages to reign in an interesting alternative take of ‘Eagle on a Pole’ but too many of their front-and-center contributions resemble a Midwestern bar’s open-mic night. There’s a insincerity at work that Oberst might hurdle but these unknown vocalists reek of, and by the time ‘Snake Hill’ opens with an unfamiliar nasally voice stating “I was born on Snake Hill…”, I’m shaking my head and saying “no, you weren’t”. The worst part about these multiple low-points isn’t that Conor sat in studio and let these songs out, but that they might’ve been decent had Oberst manned the vocals. You don’t buy a Springsteen album to hear Max Weinberg sing, you don’t buy a Conor Oberst record to hear him play rhythm guitar.

This is an escape, sure… one strikingly similar to other once-prodigious, “new-Dylan” types; Ryan Adams ditched the solo pressure by burying his name in the Cardinals, Tweedy sidestepped expectations by honing a few adult-contemporary Wilco records. Like his colleagues, Oberst seems to be escaping a legacy set out for him by the press by, you know, jamming with his buds, but don’t completely buy it: Oberst is secretly smitten with his reputation as a generational singer-songwriter. How else could you explain the existence of Outer South as an artistic statement, not to mention a commercial product? The only thing more distressing than Oberst’s interest in this mess of an album is that he expected us to lap it up simply because it showcases his name.

Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst

Conor Oberst

Conor Oberst
Merge Records.

SCQ Rating: 75%

So the mastermind of Bright Eyes and co-founder of Saddle Creek records ditches the moniker and abandons his label for a self-titled solo album on a prominent indie imprint. Even though Bright Eyes, which was declared an actual band with a concrete line-up in 2007, was by and large acknowledged as Oberst’s dictatorship, and even though Saddle Creek would’ve been an ideal fit for this collection of roots-rock. Hell, had Bright Eyes never existed, the idea of Conor Oberst releasing a solo record in 2008 would still be outlandish, given that his first two solo LPs were released on cassette way back in the early 90s. So why now? It’s anyone’s guess; mine being that after the polished, orchestrated pop of Cassadagga, Oberst took a step back to deliberate his future. Moreover I’d wager his own guesswork opted against baring the Bright Eyes name to a ramshackle follow-up like this self-titled release. A wise move, not because Conor Oberst suffers from mediocre ideas or travels unflattering directions, but because this album proves that Oberst, as a songwriter, is versatile enough to exist beyond Bright Eyes’ fame.

A few spins of Conor Oberst subtly makes clear the strategy here: these aren’t Bright Eyes tunes, restless nor careful. Here, Oberst’s home is the road, humid and weathered, where much of this material rustles like weary drifters roaming Americana on petrol vapours. ‘Sausalito’ sets the stage, a two-note Johnny Cash bassline that’s as languid as Oberst’s end-verse backing vocals, that tells his tale of highway loves and overdue debts. It’s a difficult tempo to maintain, I’d imagine, when revving it up or slowing down would’ve made the song far less transient. But that’s the point here; as Oberst himself might say, it’s another travellin’ song, and the pace becomes perfect for easy Autumn drives. ‘NYC – Gone, Gone’ features a brief return of the DIY ethic that made songs like ‘Drunk Catholic’ so urgent while ‘Moab’ hitches a ride with Pavement-style chords to provide Oberst’s thesis, stating “there’s nothing that the road cannot heal”.

This recording feels increasingly marginalized from the Bright Eyes canon thanks to its variety, jumping from the garage-band shouts of ‘Souled Out!!’ to the humble folk of ‘Milk Thistle’. Most objectionable is ‘I Don’t Wanna Die (In the Hospital)’, a hokey, full-band interlude that is innocent enough but a giant spike in an otherwise calm sequencing. The willingness to defile potential graces of ones album for the sake of spontaneity is a hard-earned trick, and a checkmate that makes Conor Oberst surprisingly hard to pin down. The only time its disjointed scope is troubling is when you’ve just heard an album highlight (like the romantic ‘Lenders in the Temple’ or best-song-ever ‘Cape Canaveral’), something reminiscent of a Bright Eyes’ classic moment, which is then interrupted by a careless, bar-stomp. Oberst seems intent on dismantling any notion of a masterpiece, in the process marking a transitional gem in his catalog.

So his new approach – dropping band and label of yore – might well be Conor’s way of lowering expectations, and while this is too scattershot to be greater than the past several Bright Eyes albums, it warrants praise that hasn’t prejudged it as inferior. If Conor Oberst is to be the second coming of a songwriter who, at 28 years young, has already lived out a full career, this is a promising first taste.