SmallTown Wanderlust 
  Conor Oberst has been a professional musician since he was 13, writing songs released on cassettes and playing live wherever he could get away with it. A love affair with the road was inevitable. Now 28, he’s released his first solo album since he formed the influential indie-rock band Bright Eyes and on Conor Oberst he delves even deeper into that traveling muse for the most satisfying set of songs in his fast growing catalogue.

It’s only been about a year since the last Bright Eyes album but Oberst was inspired by a group of musicians he has dubbed The Mystic Valley Band and recorded this set of songs in a little town in Mexico. It’s more acoustic sounding and less experimental than his Bright Eyes work, giving him enough confidence to lose that shaky and quavering voice for at least most of the songs on the new album. Small town America is celebrated in “Cape Canaveral”, “Sausalito” and “Moab”, the latter giving the album its overall theme with the line “There’s nothing that the road cannot heal.”  The road can’t help a dying cancer patient however, on “Danny Callahan” and the boogie-woogie arrangement of “I Don’t Want to Die (in the Hospital) belies the nature of that title.

Some of the lyrics stretch his sincerity with lines like “you won’t be getting in, it’s souled out in heaven” and “watch your back the ides of march cut your hair like Joan of Arc” but Oberst has always shown that his emotions are more important than the words they inspire. Like the fresh faced teenager who first ventured out on the road to artistic independence, it’s clear that he finds his satisfaction in the little things, making this album a big success. He’ll perform in our own small town this Sunday night at the Norva.

Listen for songs from the self-titled album by Conor Oberst all this week on Paul Shugrue’s new music show “Out of the Box” on Hampton Roads public radio 89.5 WHRV Mon. through Thurs. from 7 to 9 p.m., Sat. afternoon from 1 to 5 p.m. and on-demand at www.whrv.org/outofthebox.

 

 

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