Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst
Merge Records, 2008
When I first heard Conor Oberst, I was an impressionable 14 year-old in grade nine. Following the recommendation of Bright Eyes by a friend whose musical interests I trusted (“Download ‘The City Has Sex With Itself,’ by Bright Eyes” he told me,) I engaged in musical exploration, learning of a great many styles, genres, and tepid over-classification, all of it new to me.
It wasn’t more than a year after my discovery that I ran into Conor Oberst’s first album he recorded and released: 1993’s cassette-only Water, an uncertain, less-confident release by the man that became, for all intents and purposes, Bright Eyes. He was a young 13 at the time of the release, and it was the first on Lumberjack, which later became the now-influential Saddle Creek Records.





