I Thought The World Should Know

Bright Eyes “Four Winds” – I’m not sure why I downloaded this song. Morbid curiosity? A well-intentioned desire to give Conor Oberst another chance? Aimless boredom? All of the above, I guess. The first surprise was that the first minute went by without any vocals, and it’s not half bad, basically “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” done up as fakey country rock, but it’s actually a pretty good melody to nick, and the strings sound kinda nice. It’s a happy, pleasant minute.

The second surprise is that when Oberst starts singing, it doesn’t make me want to immediately erase the file. One of my major problems with Oberst has been that he sings everything in a deeply unappealing whine which makes him come off like an entitled, petulant teenage boy telling his dad to get out of his room when he’s angry, or like a kid about to eat some worms when he’s sad. Simply put, he doesn’t sound that much like a douchebag on this song. He can’t stop being himself, but he can apparently rein in his excesses and sing like an adult when he’s in the mood. His rhythm on the verses mimics that of America’s “A Horse With No Name,” and again, stealing from that tune isn’t such a terrible idea. Maybe Oberst is growing up! I mean, he’s in his mid-20s, that’s a good time to start, but when people have been telling you that you’re great and cute smart girls from all over the world have been pining for you since you were 15, you really never have any good reason to change.

The other big problem I’ve had with Conor Oberst is a more personal hang-up. Much of his music, but most especially the Lifted album, sounds like the sort of thing I would have thought would be the best thing ever back when I was a teenager — bombastic, overwrought, whiney, smug, over-arranged. If I could figure out by age 20 that this was in fact a recipe for some of the worst music imaginable, why couldn’t this dude? I can’t help but associate this guy with emotional and intellectual immaturity when almost everything he does reminds me of a period of my life in which I totally hated myself, and with good reason.

Cutting to the chase, “Four Winds” doesn’t sound like anything I would have imagined when I was 18, and I guess neither does I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning, though I definitely dislike that record. It’s a lot easier for me to be okay with Oberst when he’s not symbolizing anything to me, and it certainly helps that much more aggravating musicians have since replaced him in my mind as the straw man representing everything that I hate about contemporary indie rock. (Conor, if you’re reading and at all flattered by this, send a nice thank you card to Sufjan Stevens, okay?)

So, yeah, “Four Winds.” It’s a Bright Eyes song that I don’t dislike. Um, enjoy? (Click here to buy it from Saddle Creek.)

Say Anything “Every Man Has A Molly” – I’m ideologically opposed to the concept of “guilty pleasures,” but I can’t think of any better way for me to describe my relationship with this song. As Rob Harvilla noted in his recent feature about the band in the Village Voice, “Every Man Has A Molly” is the ultimate example of the sort of emo misogyny described by Jessica Hopper in her essay “Emo: Where The Girls Aren’t.” It’s also actually a fantastic pop song with lyrics that are intentionally nasty, over-sharing, insufferably indulgent, and above all else, extremely self-aware. Max Bemis knows that he’s being a total dick, and so he plays it for laughs without diminishing his emotions, and the result is something that comes off as being a true, if extremely unflattering portrait of a wounded, entitled asshole. Basically, this sounds like Weezer circa Pinkerton if Rivers Cuomo was ten times more of a jerk, and had no illusions about romantic love at all whatsoever. It’s well-constructed and fun, and I just really love the way the name “Molly Connolly” sounds in the song. I feel like such a creep for being way into this, and that’s kinda screwed up and hypocritical for me if just because there are loads of other records with lyrics that are just as questionable if not a whole lot worse that I don’t feel too bad about at all. (Like, for example, that entire Clipse album.) (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: You can listen to my segment from last night’s episode of Fair Game right here. It’s nice, but I’m definitely a little nervous and you can tell in my speech patterns. I kept using the same words for some reason, and even though I actually kinda coached myself to say “thanks for having me” on the way to the station, my brain made me say “thanks it was good to see you” TWICE, even though it’s radio. If you were wondering, A Sunny Day In Glasgow’s song was cut for time, and so it’s just Charlotte Hatherley, the Child Ballads, Of Montreal, and Noonday Underground.

Also: If you’ve been reading this site on RSS or whatever and missed the big banner up top, you might want to know that I’m DJing between sets for a show at Galapagos in Brooklyn tonight featuring A Place To Bury Strangers, Sh-sh-sh-shark Attack!!!, the Vandelles, and Mofos. I’m not familiar with Mofos and Sh-sh-sh-shark Attack!!!, but I’ve seen the Vandelles and A Place To Bury Strangers before, and they were both quite good.

And: I’m really glad that Choire Sicha is back at Gawker.