7.5

I guess if i said that this was the best Bright Eyes album since Wide Awake, Conor Oberst wouldn’t find it very amusing. Making it a point to call this a solo album, and recording with a different group of musicians (Mystic Valley Band, to be exact), Oberst would be happy to know that you can tell right away that this is not Bright Eyes. However, you can also tell right away that it’s the dude from Bright Eyes. Some differences are subtle, and some not so much.

On the Johnny Cash like, “I Don’t Want to Die (In a Hospital),” lines like “help me get my boots back on” are accompanied by guitar and piano that evoke images of a saloon in a corny western (or at other moments, perhaps a deleted scene from Walk the Line). On tracks like “Cape Canaveral” and “Lenders in the Temple,” Oberst pours his emo heart over folk acoustics, his voice still quivering like it did when he was screaming for Desaparecidos as a teenager. On the album’s single, “Souled Out!!!,” some kind of hybrid of Weezer and Wilco is created, and the result wouldn’t really be at home either on this album or a Bright Eyes one…but it doesn’t really matter.

In the record’s final moments, Oberst finger picks his way through a very recognizable farewell; “If I go to heaven, i’ll be bored as hell/like a cryin’ baby at the bottom of a well.” Regardless of what exactly it is, it’s the Conor Oberst that we know and love…just kinda different.