January 27, 2005

Call Him Supersensitive, He's Crafty Too

artway through Bright Eyes' set at Town Hall on Tuesday night, the band's leader and songwriter, Conor Oberst, turned to confer quietly with Mike Mogis, its producer, pedal-steel guitarist and mandolin player. "Hey, no secrets!" came a shout from the audience.

Bright Eyes fans take for granted that Mr. Oberst will reveal his every thought to them, from romance to personal philosophy to politics. He's the image of sensitivity: skinny and a little gawky, with hair cut to fall across his soulful eyes. He has the Midwestern manners of someone who grew up in Omaha, although he has lately made himself a second home in New York City. And his voice has a stuffy-nosed earnestness, quivering as he seems to blurt out exactly what's on his mind. When he's in his roots-rock mode, mixing country and folk-rock that echoes Bob Dylan, his tunes seem as natural as folk songs.

Yet Mr. Oberst, who is 24 but has been recording since he was 13, isn't just singing his diary. Although he admits exactly what he's doing - the word "truth" keeps coming up in his lyrics as he worries over his own motives - he also measures out every musical and verbal effect. The craftsmanship makes him seem even more unguarded.

Whether he's pondering the state of the world or telling a story - usually one about a faltering affair or his own career - Mr. Oberst thinks in images that grow more illuminating as they add up. "Lua," a ballad about an increasingly inevitable breakup, piled up a new contrast at the end of each verse, to conclude, "what's so simple in the moonlight, now it's so complicated." Amid the Merseybeat bounce of "Loose Leaves," he juggled thoughts of ambition and mortality: "Time's not poison but when you drink it all you'll die." A countryish new song, "I Must Belong Somewhere," was a long list of things in their place - landscapes, interiors, social conditions, "the sad guitar in its hard-shell case" - as an explanation of "why I'm staying here."

Mr. Oberst is prolific. The Town Hall concert, starting a three-night stand, took place the day Bright Eyes simultaneously released its fifth and sixth albums, the hand-played "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" and the electronics-backed "Digital Ash in a Digital Urn," both on the Team Love label. For this part of his tour, he is leading his folk-rock band and concentrating on songs from "I'm Wide Awake": he plans to perform songs from "Digital Ash" with the electro-rock band the Faint, also from Omaha.

But at Town Hall, the music was down-home. It was Mr. Oberst's old-fashioned side, a throwback to the 1960's camouflaging his streak of 21st-century emo self-absorption. The songs were kicked along by Jason Boesel on drums (from yet another Omaha band, Rilo Kiley) and topped by up to three light-fingered guitarists along with Mr. Mogis's country instruments and, for touches of stateliness, a trumpeter.

The band wasn't slick, but even when Mr. Oberst was singing about uncertainty, the music neatly underlined his ups and downs. And with the title song of "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" - a free-associative mix of wordplay, politics and self-questioning - the music eventually broke loose, with a psychedelic burst of discord and Mr. Oberst climbing on the bass drum and using his guitar to knock over a cymbal and drench the end of the song in feedback. With all he had been blurting out, Mr. Oberst had still been holding something back for the grand finale.

Perhaps to make Bright Eyes sound extra guileless, the two opening acts were arty contrivances: Tilly and the Wall, playing mock-innocent guitar-strumming pop with tapdancing for percussion, and Coco Rose, conjuring a spooky introspection with singsong tunes, nattering electronics, video projections and inscrutable performance bits.

Bright Eyes plays tonight at Town Hall in Manhattan, tomorrow night at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia and Saturday night at the 9:30 Club in Washington.