Conor Oberst - Upside Down Mountain

Conor Oberst
Upside Down Mountain
19 May 2014
Nonesuch

2 stars out of 5

I admit I’ve never understood why people are so fanatical about Bright Eyes. I’ve listened to their music and have been completely unmoved. Bright Eyes front man Conor Oberst’s new LP Upside Down Mountain does nothing but confirm my scepticism. I hear plenty of affected melancholia, false nostalgia, and—let’s be honest here—stinky cheese, but not a word or a note to indicate the presence of a musical or lyrical genius. And with the ‘90s-style post-grunge acoustic “Zigzagging Toward the Light” coming second in the track listing (those adjectives when describing a song are never a good thing, people!), the bar is set very low here very early on.

After a bad start with the first few songs, “Artifact #1” has its moments of minor-key engagement, but this small victory is negated by its cringe-worthy sing-along chorus. Any momentary satisfaction is then completely erased by the following “Lonely at the Top” and “Enola Gay,” two weak and uninspired exercises in paint-by-numbers Americana. “Night at Lake Unknown” is everything music shouldn’t be: nauseatingly sappy, dreadfully cheesy, and devoid of any creative or emotional content. The LP doesn’t get any better after that.

If you’re going to get up on stage in 2014 and play major chords on your acoustic guitar, you’d better be good looking. This appears to be about all that Oberst has going for him, as his music is offensively dull and his lyrics seem to have been spit out of some fromage-generating computer program. Upside Down Mountain isn’t going to make my Top 1000 Albums of 2014, I can tell you that much.

reviewed by Richard Krueger