Last year Conor Oberst shed his long time pseudonym of Bright Eyes with the eponymous release of Conor Oberst, which was recorded with a new group of musicians dubbed the Mystic Valley Band. His first solo album in over a decade ironically felt more like a collaborative effort. That ensemble sound takes full shape in the official debut of Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Outer South. Seven of the sixteen tracks on the record are either sung or written by members of the Mystic Valley Band rather than Oberst. Musically, Outer South is raw americana rock, full of pealing organs and wailing guitars. There are tracks on this record that you have to listen to with the volume cranked all the way up (i.e. To All the Lights in the Windows, Nikorette, Roosevelt Room, I Got the Reason #2). Oberst’s ravish lyricism breaks through on much of the record with despairing and furious vocals reminiscent of earlier Bright Eyes records. The songs featuring the other Mystic Valley Band members are more mellow but catchy and will definitely grow on you after a few listens. My favorite track on the album is Roosevelt Room, which is clearly homage to the great Latin American poet Ruben Darío who wrote “A Roosevelt,” a prophetic and scathing indictment of the United States. I threw the poem into this post because it is very much worth reading. While not as memorable as the late Bright Eyes albums, Outer South is a really strong and energetic record. The songs on this album will be a lot of fun to hear live. Check out Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley band this summer at the Utah Arts Festival in downtown Salt Lake City on June 20th. Get the details here.
TO ROOSEVELT
It is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman,
that I should come to you, Hunter,
primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
with something of Washington and more of Nimrod.
You are the United States,
you are the future invader
of the naive America that has Indian blood,
that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish.
You are the proud and strong exemplar of your race;
you are cultured, you are skillful; you oppose Tolstoy.
And breaking horses, or murdering tigers,
you are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar.
(You are a professor of Energy
as today’s madmen say.)
You think that life is fire, t
hat progress is eruption,
that wherever you shoot
you hit the future.
No.
The United States is potent and great.
When you shake there is a deep tremblor
that passes through the enormous vertebrae of the Andes.
If you clamor, it is heard like the roaring of a lion.
Hugo already said it to Grant: The stars are yours.
(The Argentine sun, ascending, barely shines,
and the Chilean star rises…) You are rich.
You join the cult of Hercules to the cult of Mammon,
and illuminating the road of easy conquest,
Liberty raises its torch in New York.
But our America, that has had poets
since the ancient times of Netzahualcoyotl,
that has walked in the footprints of great Bacchus
who learned Pan’s alphabet at once;
that consulted the stars, that knew Atlantis
whose resounding name comes to us from Plato,
that since the remote times of its life
has lived on light, on fire, on perfume, on love,
America of the great Montezuma, of the Inca,
the fragrant America of Christopher Columbus,
Catholic America, Spanish America,
the America in which noble Cuahtemoc said:
“I’m not in a bed of roses”; that America
that trembles in hurricanes and lives on love,
it lives, you men of Saxon eyes and barbarous soul.
And it dreams. And it loves, and it vibrates, and it is the daughter of the Sun.
Be careful. Viva Spanish America!
There are a thousand cubs loosed from the Spanish lion.
Roosevelt, one would have to be, through God himself,
the-fearful Rifleman and strong Hunter,
to manage to grab us in your iron claws.
And, although you count on everything, you lack one thing: God
Rubén Darío, 1904
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band – Outer South
