I do a bit of art modeling for cash- I enjoy it, and the money's decent. Some classes the kids just chatter through, other times the students or instructors play music. Sometimes this is awesome, like the instructor who played a David Bowie best-of collection for the duration of the session, or the guy who played a bunch of Black Sabbath and the Misfit's "Last Caress" ("I got something to say...I killed your baby today!") twice in a row. Sometimes it's stuff I'm less into- like Dave Matthew's Band (shudder). Someone put on a mix recently that had a couple songs from Bright Eyes "Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground" that has become damn near unlistenable. I say this because I bought the album back in 2003, and I liked it ok then. I was also depressed, not getting laid, and living in a foreign country where nobody could check my taste in music, which was both liberating but led to some questionable taste in music.
I actually still like Bright Eye's "Letting Off The Happiness," from 1998, which was the first record of his I bought. It's equally overwrought but I just like it better. I think the titles of the respective albums say it all- Conor Oberst's adolescent angst is so overblown that it works, at least it's sincere. Lifted (which I will abbreviate to the short title) is the work of a man who realizes that chicks find his sad shtick really hot and is now cashing in on it, plus has enough commercial success to get away with chugging out an album with a fourteen word title and eight minute songs that have virtually no content for the first minute or so. I don't know how much I ever really liked the album, or if I just listened to it because it was sad and so was I. But it's pretty goddam terrible to hear now, if a bit funny:
You write such pretty words
But life's no storybook
Love's an excuse to get hurt
And to hurt.
Do you like to hurt?
I do! I do!
Then hurt me!!!!!!I think Conor Oberst would make an excellent character in a black comedy by someone like Todd Solondz or Gregg Araki- a calculatingly depressing, baby faced but conniving folk rocker who does writes mopey songs to get chicks. And if Oberst could be persuaded to play himself, all the better.
(and I realize he's had a career since lifted...I just haven't been paying attention. I just hope he grows up to be as dapper and scoundrel-like as Morrissey.)
