Better Oblivion Community Center
Better Oblivion Community Center
2019
The argument of "if you like X and you like Y, then you'll definitely like Z" is so fucking reductive, but there's literally no other way to talk about Better Oblivion Community Center. BOCC is a duo consisting of indie mainstay Conor Oberst and indie legend-in-the-making Phoebe Bridgers, and yes, this album sounds at time like both a Bright Eyes album and a Bridgers album. If you like either of those artists, you will like Better Oblivion Community Center. If you like both of those artists, perhaps even love them (as the humble author of this piece does), then you are going to pretty much instantly fall for this album.
Admittedly, neither artist is straying too far from their own signature sound, since both artists mostly sound similar on their own anyway. This may be a product of Bridgers having grown up listening to Bright Eyes and being able to process all the lessons learned from that great project at an early age (she was eight when Bright Eyes' Lifted was released). No one in their right fucking mind would accuse Phoebe Bridgers of making copycat Oberst music for her solo work; I'm just saying that they both exist in the same neighborhood, so a collaborative album both makes sense and also isn't a divergent sound for anyone involved.
Both artists play music that is mostly folk music that occasionally takes detours into straight-up indie rock, and even more rarely, adds some synths into the mix. Both artists have distinctive voices that sing lyrics that are usually poetic, often telling short stories while being a little obtuse, but still getting the message across. Both artists are content to play languid and sad tunes that are surprisingly effective, even for those of us with hearts of stone. Both artists sound enough alike that they are able to sing the same notes and the same words at the same time for most of this album's run-time, and it works like gangbusters.
And yet, each artist has a unique sound too. Like I said, you couldn't mix them up, and they are separate enough that you can go through the tracklist on BOCC and tell which song is whose ("Didn't Know What I Was In For" is Bridgers, "Sleepwalkin'" is Oberst, and so on and so forth).
Yeooo, this blog post sucks. Which is it? Do Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst sound the same, or do they sound different? "Both" is a cop-out, so here's a better theory. Better Oblivion Community Center is like a pair of 3D glasses. There are two different pictures here, each slightly askew from the other. But when you use this great album to put 'em together, you get a full three-dimensional picture that is whole and real and alive.
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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Forest Lawn"
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Stray Observations
- Unmentioned above is the fact that Better Oblivion Community Center is billed as a "concept album" about a wellness center / cult. There's not much mention of it in the album proper, just the allusion in the name of the band/album, and all the promotional material (e.g. the video for "Dylan Thomas," etc.). The concept is somewhat half-assed, no doubt, but I do admire the fact that the duo went the extra mile to promote this project as something more than just "hey, here's two artists you like."
- "Dylan Thomas," by the way, is the best song here, but that's a tired take. We get it, Joe, you usually like the most energetic song on the album.
- That's a take that I discussed in more detail regarding Bridgers' recent solo album, Punisher. Remember that week of The Albums That Matter columns that I wrote a couple weeks ago? I most likely did that subconsciously to avoid writing about Better Oblivion Community Center the same week that Punisher came out. Too much of a good thing, as they say.
- ALBUM COVER: I don't know what we're looking at, to be honest. I think a bunch of chandeliers? It's supposed to look creepy, like you're in some weird cult and they only let you out at night and the only light is coming from these ancient chandeliers hung on tree branches. I dunno. So much about this album supposed to be mysterious and obscured as part of the whole conceit (they recorded in secret, promotions for the album included fake brochures for a wellness center, etc.), that it was tough to find any solid information about this album. Who took the photo? Why was it used? We may never know the answer, because there might not be one.
- CHARTS: It's not much, but it's worth bringing up for a singular reason. So BOCC didn't make the Billboard 200, obviously. But it did peak at #41 on the Billboard Rock Albums list, a less prestigious but still noteworthy chart. There are 40 albums that sold/streamed better than it that week. Fine, okay, sure. I get it. I don't get what was #1 on that chart, though. And I never will. Fuck this shit. The soundtrack for Bohemian Rhapsody was #1. FUCK THAT MOVIE!
- PREVIOUSLY ON THE BLOG: This album landed at #13 on my Top 2019 Albums list (but I could see a reevaluation of that list placing this as high as #8), and "Dylan Thomas" is at #15 on the Best 2019 Songs list (mostly accurate, but might bump up one spot if you consider that Harry and the Potters' "The Stone" does not have as long a shelf life as I thought it might at the time).
- I always get to this point in the blog post and start regretting how little I talked about each individual song. I know we're trying to zoom out and see the general picture in this column, but it's worth pointing out some particular moments in some particular songs.
- Like how "My City" has this rambling guitar lick that might make it my second favorite song on the album. It sincerely feels like Oberst and Bridgers are just taking a little walk along a riverbank, chilling, hands in pockets, talking about life (until that moment at around 2:20, and then again at the end, when the mood shifts temporarily, and both of them are screaming like something bad happened—maybe one of them fell in the river).
- Like how the video for "Dylan Thomas" is directed by Japanese Breakfast, a great Philly artist. I hope we get to discuss her music at some point in this column (not likely, with album titles like Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet).
- Like how "Big Black Heart" has songwriting credits for Oberst and Bridgers and also two members of the emo band Tigers Jaw. Apparently Bridgers reached out to them. I listened to "I Saw the Wolf" by this band, and yeah, I can see some similarities in the riff, but it's interesting to me that the members of Tiger Jaw denied that they sounded similar. This might an age thing again—Bridgers has been hearing about artists being sued for vaguely similar-sounding riffs her whole life, so she's just being cautious. She's the fucking best, isn't she? Gosh.
- Like how "Sleepwalkin'" has the line "I like setting off those bottle rockets," which is a line that plays very differently here in 2020. A once-innocuous line now makes me want to open up my bedroom window and yell at Phoebe Bridgers to SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY IT'S THREE IN THE GODDAMN MORNING!!!!!
- Like how the album ends with a guitar solo. Who does that anymore?
- This album was surprise released on a Thursday morning, with almost no warning (they played Colbert the night before, but it's not like I was awake for late night television anyway). It's been eighteen months since it was dropped, and I don't think there's been a surprise release I've been more excited for since. Run the Jewels and Cloud Nothings were big drops for me recently, but they don't match the surprise of two of your favorite artists teaming up without your knowledge and then dropped an album out of nowhere.
NEXT TIME: Between the Buttons by the Rolling Stones
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