Release Date:
Tuesday, February 19, 2002
Artist:
Desaparecidos
Recording under the moniker Bright Eyes, 21-year old Omaha, Nebraska, native Conor Oberst has built up a small cult following of hypersensitive hipsters with his frighteningly naked, ferociously plaintive indie-pop laments. Here, Oberst takes a break from his howling, überpersonal musings as Bright Eyes to howl about something else: the disturbing commercialization and corporatization of, well, everything. It’d be easy to dismiss this fuck-the-Man rhetoric as simply the naive discontent of perpetually disgruntled youth if Desaparecidos didn’t rock with such conviction. Unlike most of those busy raging against the machine, Oberst doesn’t bitch about how the WTO is crushing the Third World with oppressive debt. Instead, as on his Bright Eyes recordings, he makes it personal, explicating why the Blockbuster on the corner is ruining his fucking life. His ideas are hardly revelatory, but on tracks such as “Manana” and “Greater Omaha” they’re propelled by a messy, impassioned Hüsker Dü–meets–Dinosaur Jr. guitar grind that could make Alan Greenspan’s grocery list sound like fire-breathing rock’n’roll.
