Bright Eyes

live @ 930 Club, 9.22.2002

The last time Conor Oberst performed in D.C. as Bright Eyes, his uneven set ended when he stomped off stage, peeved at the audience’s lack of reverent silence during his quiet songs. There was no such scene at the 930 Club Sunday night, however, where Oberst and his 12-piece “Bright Eyes Orchestra” earned the evening’s air of rapt attention with an engaging two-hour performance.

There were parallels in Bright Eyes big band music to the sensitive sounds of Belle and Sebastian and the sprawling country of Lambchop, but the key spiritual link to Oberst’s art might be Leonard Cohen. Songs like “Laura Laurent”, “Nothing Gets Crossed Out” and “June on the West Coast” dripped with the kind of melodramatic self-obsession Cohen specializes in, and Oberst’s world-weary vocal style on “Kathy With A K’s Song” (replete with a wallflower’s stage presence and hair perpetually falling over one eye) was Leonard renovated for the Zeros. Oberst is a better arranger than Cohen ever was though, and the huge band he assembled ---including french horn, casio, three drummers, strings, winds, chimes, banjo and mandolin--- swelled with deft grace on numbers like “Bowl of Oranges”, “False Advertising” and “Lover I Don’t Have to Love”.

Oberst used Washington to throw a bit of protest singer into his act as well, snarling the anti-media “To Love and Be Loved” and turning “Don’t Know When But A Day is Gonna Come” into a anti-war-with-Iraq screed by adding new lines about “killing the infidels for oil wells” to “save wealthy Texas oil families”. All of which meant Oberst didn’t go away mad, but returned to thundering applause for a generous ---and deserved---encore.

Washington Post, 2002

Bright Eyes

live @ the Black Cat, 5.19.2002

Any artist who titles an album “Lifted or The Story Is In The Soil Keep Your Ear To The Ground” is likely to either be a nature freak or a very intense about their creations. In the case of Bright Eyes leader Conor Oberst, it is definitely the latter. The Omaha, Nebraska outfit proved that at the Black Cat Sunday night, treating a full house to an hour of emotionally charged, poetic and occasionally surly, indie folk -rock.

Oberst is Bright Eyes only constant member and for his current tour he has assembled a seven-piece, all female band to fill in the tone colors of his word-drunk compositions. Led by guitarist/keyboardist Jiha Lee, the Bright Eyes lineup included violin, cello, clarinet and flute in addition to bass and drums, lending a chamber-rock swirl to the program, which mainly drew from the aforementioned---and not yet released---album. Like his previous recordings, which have drawn a legion of heavily devoted followers, Oberst’s heartfelt singing veered new songs like “Loose Leaves” between indie rock and sensitive folk with a melodic grace and often included marvelous lyrical interchanges.

Oberst, who played electric guitar and occasional piano, takes his craft seriously, which was clear when he stopped the quiet “Messenger Bird’s Song” to tell the chattering crowd to “go home if you’re not interested” and later stomped off stage without a word at set’s end, ignoring prolonged howls for an encore. Still, when Bright Eyes was fully engaged on tunes like “Arienette” and “The Center of the World” the full force of Oberst’s considerable singing and songwriting gifts was enough to make a little brattiness seem trifling.

Washington Post, 2002