Now, don't feel discouraged by the title. This is not going to be my emo swoop into teen angst, nor a diatribe about how no one "feels their music" anymore, "man!" Just because I like Bright Eyes, does not mean I'm a homosexual living in a world of people who just don't understand me, and my love for music, amongst other things. Except I am and they don't. So. Ha!
Recently, which means within the last two years, I've been really, really into Bright Eyes. And I've never really fallen out of love with him... it's sad, I believe Conor Oberst may be the longest relationship I've ever had... damn, sucks to be me!
He is entirely brilliant, though. His voice is raw, and ugly; even he admits to not being much of a singer. And yet, it's that rawness, that ugliness, that makes him so relatable, because, like everyone, he feels things, and can communicate them in a real, tangible way.
"I find one of the most interesting, alluring properties of Conor Oberst that he is neither interesting nor alluring in person. If you watch him, he's this hunched, sort of shell of a man, someone who is truly marked by his past, in a way unlike any musician I've ever seen before him. Yet he reminds me so much of Bob Dylan, but without any of the romantic, poetic aura. He just is. Like, I imagine finding him on a street in some city somewhere, eating something he found in the garbage, wearing someone else's clothes. He has this twitch, this painful or pain-filled sense about how he moves, almost like he has to really think about where he's going to put his limbs but instead swings them wildly, missing. Every time he performs a song, he not only changes his movements, but the arrangement, the emphasis, sometimes even the words. Which was something Dylan did at the concert. That's a connection I'd never really drawn before, but which I'm now smiling at having made. And it's so different, watching him sing, from listening to him. You can see the scream. I remember once, I was watching a Tegan and Sara interview, and one of them, Tegan most probably, mentioned that to her, singing is acting, more than anything else, it's capturing the emotion a thousand times repeated of a conclusion you just barely reached to begin with. Conor is not an actor. He is feeling the same emotions he felt upon writing when he performs a song. You can hear it in his voice, see it in the way his lips curl downward, like when you try to conceal a cry and all you end up doing is breathing heavy, a fish out of water. Sometimes he extends or lengthens the words, lets his lips linger in their shape, as if he forgets he's singing for anyone other than himself. I used to think he just looked like some crazy homeless man -- which, don't get me wrong, he totally does, haha. But now I think he looks more just like someone who's lived life. The good, the bad. I feel like ugly is the most perfect word for Conor Oberst, but I never, ever mean it as an insult. Raw is probably more of the right word. Like a baby just out of the womb, or the stubble of a man a few days past time to shave. Sometimes he screams a word without even screaming it, no increase in volume, he puts the intensity in his voice and it's just moving, absolutely bone-trembling type emotion. I feel his music in a way I don't feel any other. I mean, really feel it, like you're holding it in your hands, letting it swim through your fingers at times, clutching it with knuckles of blotchy white at others, really grabbing at it or just letting it exist. I'm not sure why exactly I'm telling you this, I was watching a video of Lenders In the Temple, my favorite song of his, and it just struck me, how intensely, I can't even describe it, just how Conor Oberst makes me feel everything at once, makes me recognize what I'm feeling without being able to name it."
I wrote that about a month ago, but it still reigns true today.
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