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Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers’ New Album Is Both a Throwback and Perfectly Timed

I feel at a bit of a loss to explain fully the chest-smacking satisfaction I felt on first listening to the eponymous album by Better Oblivion Community Center, which stole into the world almost entirely by surprise on Wednesday night, after nearly two years of surreptitious co-writing in Los Angeles by the cross-generational team of songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst. Sure, I came to it already admiring both—for nearly 20 years in Oberst’s case, since the days of his Omaha, Nebraska–based band, Bright Eyes, albeit with many ups and downs; with Bridgers, since her heart-swallowing 2017 solo debut Stranger in the Alps, along with last year’s EP by her other collaborative project, Boygenius. I should also grant that the kinds of wounded-and-dyspeptic folk-rock hues they each specialize in occupy ample bandwidth in the spectrum of my tastes, especially when peppered with disruptive noises and jokes. But as for why, in the final gasps of January 2019, this feels like the gift I had no idea I was craving … I’d have to start with the sequencing.



from Stories from Slate http://bit.ly/2MzJsN2

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