Photographs by Rachel Lipsitz | www.littlepants.com

“Sorry if we all look sick,” Oberst laconically intones early on in the set he and his Mystic Valley Band gleefully hammer out this evening; “we all are sick”. Not one to let this stop him knocking back vodka mixers or throwing himself into a long old set list with abandon, tonight sees his recent self-titled effort fleshed-out, bulked-up and frankly sounding better than ever - an instinctive understanding the band must have stumbled upon down Mexico-way bolstered by months spent touring their wares. Continue Reading

Now 28, Conor Oberst famously began his recording career at the age of 13. Since those early years, his solo career has taken something of a back seat, with most of his material coming as part of various bands, mostly Bright Eyes, whose last release was the well-received Cassadaga from last year. Taking a break from that band, Oberst travelled down to Mexico and through January and February of this year, recorded this self-titled album of folky country rock. The act of leaving the US and going to Mexico is directly referenced here in “NYC-Gone, Gone”, but forms part of a wider, recurring theme of starting again. “Sausalito”, for example, talks about making a change to living on a houseboat - and on “Moab”, Oberst asserts that “there’s nothing that the road cannot heal”. Specifically, the album was recorded with the so-called “Mystic Valley Band” in the town of Tepoztlán, believed by the Aztecs to have been the birthplace of the deathly feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl. The story goes that when a European explorer unearthed a statue of said god, he found it so horrific that he promptly reburied it - I think we can be sure that history will be kinder to this album, which as it turns out is pretty good. Continue Reading

Well, that’s one way to fight the leak…

Conor Oberst is streaming, in full, his new solo album (with the Mystic Valley Band) over at conoroberst.com.

Put it this way, it can’t be as bad as Cassadaga…