Review for Better Oblivion Community Center’s Self-Titled

On Better Oblivion Community Center, a new band helmed by former collaborators Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, each song is a story, and each story engenders beauty, melancholy, and discovery through being simple.

I just texted my mom about the record. In fact, she recently sent me a slew of texts about Phoebe Bridgers, who she’s just started really getting into since I shared Bridgers’ 2017 record with her. “I listen to it when I’m cleaning the house,” she wrote, “It’s sad but sometimes it’s nice to listen to something sad.” It’s a fulfilling surprise when you’re able to reverse the classic parent-to-child music sharing that has been happening all your life. With the unexpected drop of Better Oblivion Community Center, what we have is the same thing, a fulfilling surprise.

Bridgers has been busy in the past two years since her debut record, releasing a separate collaboration with fellow indie rockers Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, so she’s had her practice. And if you need a reintroduction to Conor Oberst, most know him for his project Bright Eyes, specifically the song “First Day Of My Life.” His last solo record was released in 2017.

Oberst and Bridgers previously collaborated on Bridgers’ debut, with complimentary lines and embedded delivery. On this record, they continue the tradition. Many songs find Bridgers and Oberst alternating simple, yet vivid verses, and then joining forces on the choruses, lifting the songs up and making them whole. The production is varied, with calm folk ballads (“Didn’t Know What I Was In For”) to 80s bass arpeggiated pop tracks (“Exception To The Rule.”) Yet it all still stays consistent, chorus laden guitars and thumping drums throughout, like a Born To Run inside a bar instead of a stadium, with Bridgers’ and Oberst’s combined voices acting like glue.

The lyrical content shines the most when it uncovers conclusions, like one of the record’s best tracks, “Sleepwalkin’” What first begins as a chorus of questions, “Is this having fun? / It’s not like the way it was / I thought that you loved this stuff / Or did I make that up?,” ends with a pensive realization, “I gave what I got / It came as a shock / To find out I’m fine with what I’ve lost.”

Or on another track, “Chesapeake” when it’s the reverse — a song about seeing if our conclusions are true. What will happen to the inspirations we love once we make it? When we get on the stage to play music, will that be at the expense of our old favorite artists? “I can’t hardly wait / For someone to replace,” and then later “Good men die like dogs / My hero plays to no one in, a parking lot.”

The band has a memorable name that groups more than just Bridgers and Oberst; a variety of other musicians worked on the project too. Collectively on their debut record, the Better Oblivion Community Center give us answers as to why their band name has to be such a mouthful. Because, even if it means going to a dark place, working towards painful conclusions is possible when we do it together.