Conor Oberst: Ruminations ALBUM REVIEW

I hold a special place in my heart for Conor Oberst's musical output under the Bright Eyes moniker. Time and time again, he and his band managed to capture the heart and soul of great folk music all while telling stories that are distinctly modern. Such as the opener to I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning which tells the story of a plane that crashes into the sea, but Conor paints the picture of its passengers so beautifully and drives the built-up emotions home with a song that is as powerful and profound as it is sad and contemplative. It is sad then that none of Mr. Oberst's solo material has roused anything greater than a mild shrug in me for the last few years. I've always felt that he simply buried himself in too much instrumentation, and his vocals just sounded to self-assured and clean, nothing like the cool quiver of his Bright Eyes work.

However, with Ruminations, Conor finally manages to bring back the brilliance of prime Bright Eyes with an album that I feel is simply the finest singer-songwriter of the year. Ruminations is just that, Conor visits moments from his own life and paints one beautiful lyrical portrait after another. I found tracks like "Gossamer Thin" especially moving with just how effortlessly Conor weaves such confident and fragile melodies over such sparse instrumentation.

That's another thing; this album's instrumentation has been reduced to essentially only the bear necessities. Basically, every instrument you see on the cover was used to record this LP, nothing more. And as I've always said, this is where Conor is at his finest, when he can just let his songwriting chops shine. And shine they do, with tracks that range from achingly beautiful to downright sinister ("Counting Sheep" is especially grim). But then we get some more political leaning tracks, not a unique song concept for Conor, but here, he seems more self-assured and confident about his beliefs, unlike some of his solo material where it almost felt like he had to prove himself. The track that best illustrates this is the track "A Little Uncanny" which reminds me of Blonde on Blonde/ Blood on the Tracks era Dylan, and takes pop culture figures from American history and shows how they effected various parts of culture.

It has  been a very long time since I've felt the need to talk about a Conor Oberst/ Bright Eyes project at such length, and I think that says more than any amount of laborious praise-filled text ever could. Simply put, listen to this album.

9.2/10