One of pop's more significant voices

Conor Oberst

Late last year, Conor Oberst found himself thrust into the spotlight when it was reported that Bright Eyes, the indie band he fronts and writes all the material for, had come from nowhere to top the American singles chart. Indeed, they had not just topped the chart, they had taken both the No 1 and No 2 positions, a feat with precedent only in the dim and distant past when The Beatles, and other similarly era-defining artists created seismic tremors in the cultural landscape. Oberst is justifiably proud of his band's success.

"Even apart from that fact that it's my band," he says, "I think it's really cool that an independent label can outsell all these major-label companies with bigger promotional budgets. It's a testament to the fact that people still really like music and are prepared to find something they really like, that it's not all about advertising."

The singles were dissimilar in style and content - Take It Easy (Love Nothing) used the synthetic tones and textures of 1980s electropop, while Lua was a sombre assessment of a doomed relationship, picked out over a plaintive guitar. "I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss/So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it," observed Oberst with the painful honesty and sardonic attitude that has seen him described as a Dylan for the modern age.

Meeting him, such comparisons melt away. Thin and quiet, with the fragile appearance of a typical vegan, Oberst has none of Dylan's acidity, although he undoubtedly triggers the same sort of maternal instincts as Bob did in his youth. Well, it seems to have worked with Winona Ryder, anyway - their brief dalliance affirming that he had crossed the line separating small-time scufflers from celebrities.

Swaddled in a parka in the warmth of an anonymous London hotel lounge, he just seems like an ordinary Joe, albeit one possibly in need of a hot lemon and honey concoction. He wears his fragility like a consumptive poet's overcoat.

Now 24, Oberst has been making music since he was a child and recording his songs since he was 13. His early songs were about "the same stuff I'm still writing about - life, or whatever; though granted, life to a 13-year-old is a lot different from an adult's view of it, so it would be in simpler language. But even then, I was taking it seriously, really trying my best to emulate people I admired".

These included parental favourites - Van, Joni, Jackson, Dylan, Creedence - and the new-wave bands his brother preferred, such as the Replacements, the Smiths, Sonic Youth, REM, and Simon Joyner, a folk-singer from Oberst's native Omaha, the midwest city best known as the nuclear silo capital of America.

"But there's a small art community who try to make the most of what resources there are and they are really supportive of each other - they have to be because there's not a lot of outside support."

Oberst continues to release Bright Eyes' recordings through the Saddle Creek label he set up with a few friends, even though their fanbase has now swollen to around 200,000 and is growing fast.



Bright Eyes broke through to widespread recognition with the 2002 release Lifted, or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground, an ambitious concept-album. The results bore comparison with Nashville's Lambchop, as does Bright Eyes' sprawling cast of 15 or so musicians, a floating membership whose stable elements seem to be Oberst and his multi-instrumentalist engineer Mike Mogis. Also, like Lambchop, Bright Eyes' most recent release came in the form of two simultaneously issued albums, the folksy I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and the funkier, more modernistic Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, heralded by last year's two chart-topping singles.

"For me, it wasn't some artistic statement that I wanted to make, or anything like that," Oberst says. "It was more that we finished the folk record first, and we could have released it last summer, but I had all these ideas and sketches for the Digital Ash record, which we wanted to work on. So we put it to one side, finished the other record, and released them at the same time."

The albums, he claims, represent different sides to his character. "Essentially, all our songs are simple folk songs, and we've always made an attempt to, like, decorate or dress them up in different ways.

"A lot of those songs on the folk album were written a couple of years ago, when I started renting an apartment in New York, so they reflect that whole intoxicating vibe of New York," he says. "Then on Digital Ash ... most of the songs are about death. But even beyond that, the idea that something can exist without a physical form, like on the internet. Then you think about the parallels that has with things like love and fear and souls, things that are present in our lives, that impact upon us, yet which have no physical shape.

"I find it interesting to look at oblivion and wonder whether you can retain your essence past the inevitable disintegration of this," he concludes, slapping his own flesh. Such philosophical ruminations are rarer now in rock'n'roll than ever before. " " " "

It is his literacy, matched by intense political convictions, that links Oberst with earlier generations of thoughtful rockers. Bright Eyes were the youngest on last year's Vote For Change tour. He will be out there when the next election rolls around - and it is likely that by then, Conor Oberst will be one of pop's more significant voices.

- INDEPENDENT