Dickie Oberst: Former Child Star
Like a former child-star pin-up losing their looks to the middle-age spread, Conor Oberst is aging badly, in the most public way imaginable. Having been introduced to audiences as some songwriting prodigy, a teenaged Dylan spewing forth torrents of bilious angst under the handle Bright Eyes, Oberst has, in recent years, grown less volatile and less vital with each passing disc.
Never was this more obvious when, last year, Oberst abandoned his Bright Eyes handle, effectively relieving himself of all the goodwill he’d earnt via classic Bright Eyes LPs like 2000's Fevers and Mirrors and 2002's Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground. Working under his own name, the self-titled Conor Oberst album showed a child-star all grown up into a not-particularly-attractive man. With his 30s looming, Oberst wanted nothing more than to goof around with his friends, making a laidback, lazy set of drinking songs that were clearly more enjoyable for those making the music than those listening to it.
Entourage
If Conor Oberst gave off the wafting aroma of a sausage party, Outer South positively reeks of it. From its flatulent cover shot —a pack of dudes chillaxing on the couch, pranking on their pink-shirted leader— to its bog-standard bar-band jams, it’s an album built for non-discerning rec-rooms, the audio equivalent of low-brow domestic beer. As with his previous “solo” record, the appearance of Oberst’s name on the front is ironic. If Bright Eyes was a study in Conor Oberst —his angst, his passion, his politics, his neurosis— then Conor Oberst records are a study in the other dudes.
As if to envince this point, Oberst hands over ever-increasing moments in the sun for the other dudes. Padding out Outer South’s seemingly-unending, badly-in-need-of-editing 70 minute run-time, there are six non-Oberst songs on the set. And listening to them reminded me of those embarrassing concert-going moments where the backing band gets to ‘show off their chops,’ and the audience must dutifully watch, and politely applaud, even though it’s usually a complete and utter train-wreck, and likely an excuse for the star-of-the-show to go have a cigarette or line of coke or whatever.
But, whilst it’s easy to lament the 25 minutes of non-Oberst songs herein —and even easier to suggest that, minus such, the album would be much stronger— doing so effectively lets Oberst off the hook. Because the songs the boss-of-it-all submits herein are hardly killer Conor. In fact, there’s only one song herein, “Ten Women,” that resembles classic, early-’00s Oberst. The rest sound fat and happy; bloated and lazy; the tossed-off, band-practice jams of an artist whose initial, youthful appeal is fast fading from memory.
Record Label: Merge
Release Date: 5 May 2009
