KEY POINTS:
Conor "Bright Eyes" Oberst's olive green eyes are as sparkly as his alias purports.
Variously described as "the new Dylan", "a lightning rod for his generation", and the sound of "the weakling squaring up to the bully", this 27-year-old US songwriter is one of the most adroit and
compelling lyricists around.
The Dylan comparison is apt given Oberst's knack for conjuring striking images, his tumbling verses so detailed and light on repetition that one wonders how his memory navigates a path. The messages probably help.
Bright Eyes' new album Cassadaga broaches war, global warming, apocalypse, religion, love and death. "The Bible is blind/ the Torah is deaf/ the Koran is mute," he sings on flagship single Four Winds. "If you burnt them all together, you'd get close to the truth."
Even the love songs seem to sit in the shadow of melting icecaps, tsunamis and superpowers waiting for the final battle. "Love me now, hell is coming", he implores on the ominous, reverb and strings-drenched No One Would Riot For Less.
In lesser hands the song might have sounded mawkish, but Oberst has conjured an affecting thing of beauty.
The plot thickens when you consider that Cassadaga was named after a small town in central Florida famous for its spiritualist community.
"I was immediately fascinated by the idea of a place with such a high density of psychics, mystics and mediums," says Oberst. Cassadaga and the sanctuary Oberst found there are referenced in the aforementioned Four Winds, its rootsy country representative of much of the new album.
While country rock is hardly new territory for Bright Eyes, Cassadaga is a world away from 2005's electronic-infused damp squib, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Oberst seems aware that, if you are going to tackle themes so politically charged as those on Cassadaga, reconnecting with the earthy sound of his 1960s heartland is a good idea.
He says the 13 songs on the new album were whittled down from a possible 30 or so. Guests include esteemed alt-country singer Gillian Rawlings, and Sleater-Kinney's erstwhile drummer Janet Weiss.
The album's year-long recording sessions took Oberst from coast to coast.
He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, once home to the largest buffalo population in America. His father played guitar and piano in a covers band, and his mother is a teacher. He was writing music by 12, and began touring and recording with his first band, Commander Venus, as a teenager.
Drummer Matt Baum, a veteran of the scene Oberst soon led, once described Omaha as a place where, "If you don't have a girlfriend and you don't smoke crack, you play music." Oberst acknowledges that living there fired his imagination from an early age.
"I was deeply prone to day-dreaming and I'd make up whole elaborate scenarios and play back these crazy movies in my mind."
After two albums with Commander Venus, Oberst, then 18, began making the first Bright Eyes album, 1998's Letting Off the Happiness.
The singer's dark imagination hatched the stand-out track Padraic My Prince, a fictitious account of a nonexistent younger brother's death by drowning.
"I've always been preoccupied with death, since I learnt what it was," he says.
The first time politics "properly entered" his mind was during the 2000 US presidential election. Oberst, drawn in by the campaign's controversies, began paying attention to Bush's speeches.
"I realised he was an idiot. Then came September 11 and war in Afghanistan and Iraq. I was freaked out, and one way of coping was to start trying to understand global politics and our foreign policy."
Having played 2004's Vote For Change tour alongside Bruce Springsteen and REM at the invitation of Michael Stipe, in 2005 he took Bush to task on When The President Talks to God, rush-releasing it as a free download on iTunes.
This incensed Republicans, and Oberst - a sometime recreational drug-user and agnostic - became something of a hate figure to Bush supporters hip enough to know who he was.
"I've had Bush supporters being aggressive to me, but you'd be surprised how those cowards hide when it comes to a conversation. They'll talk behind your back, but face to face I have yet to meet someone who can make a coherent argument for what the Bush Administration is doing."
But Bush still occupies the White House, US and British troops are still at war in Iraq, and Oberst's agency seems to have limits. How does he deal with that?
"I try to stay positive," he sighs, "but the cynical side of me gets frustrated when I see how our world is structured. Every little bit can help, and to be organised and educated is fundamental. But if we were really to address fair-trade issues and reconcile ourselves with the rest of the world, our lifestyle would have to change radically, and frankly I don't think many people are prepared to do it.
"That's when it gets a little bit doomsday," says Oberst, the apocalyptic themes of Cassadaga gathering around him. "When you reach the tipping point, something has to give."
- INDEPENDENT