Omahan Conor Oberst has announced a lengthy solo tour to accompany his impending solo LP due out August 5th.

Why even drop the name Bright Eyes? Bright Eyes is Conor Oberst. No offense to Mike Mogis and Nate Wolcott, they are both very talented but everyone else on stage with Conor is just “you know, those guys in Bright Eyes’ band”. And actually he is still bringing Nate with on this tour, along with Maria Macey Taylor, Taylor Hollingsworth, Nik Freitas, and Rilo Kiley’s Jason Boesel in his band called the Mystic Valley Band. I’m guessing this naming followed a couple days visit with Mescalito.

You can stream 2 of the tracks on ConorOberst.com now. Let me know if you get a pre-release.

So dare I shell out 40 bucks tomorrow morning to see him at the Trubadour August 5th? A CD release show of sorts? Probably not. He seems to loathe his audiences and never fails to play exactly what nobody else wants to here. I’ll wait for a smaller Bright Eyes show.

North American Tour Dates
7/25 Billings, MT Bones Brewing
7/27 Calgary, AB Calgary Folk Festival
7/29 Vancouver, BC Richards on Richards
7/30 Seattle, WA Neumo’s
7/31 Bend, OR Midtown Ballroom

I, being from Nebraska, am a huge fan of The Faint. Luckily they are touring through L.A. doing 2 nights at the Fonda. I just might have to see them both. And after 4 years of waiting …a new record!

Press Release:
A culmination of nearly four years of writing and recording, Omaha quintet, The Faint are preparing to release their fifth album, Fasciinatiion, on August 5 on the band’s own newly-formed label, blank.wav. Working on their own without any time constraints, the songs went through many recorded incarnations before finding their final forms. The result is the best album in the band’s career, a record that is the purest culmination of The Faint’s brilliant musical instincts, ideas and aesthetic, with each member contributing equally to its creation.

How is it that I’ve been in Los Angeles for more than a year and have never been to the Vista Theater, I must have passed it a thousand times? The Vista in Los Feliz is a lovely place that normally shows some pretty good movies bordering on indie and/or typically the most watchable thing that you’d find in the Arclight down the street. The exterior resembles a Spanish mission with the interior more along the lines of Cleopatra’s bedroom. (inside joke: Joan in the north and Cleo in the south.)

So to fill this movie theater with concert-going patrons, a few of the rows of seats were removed and replaced with folding chairs. I guess that spaceland promotions figured that 2 rows of folding chairs could fit into 1 row of theater seats. This would have been all well and good if it didn’t mean that a certain percentage of said concert-going patrons wouldn’t be stuck in the seats right behind renegade rows of the aforementioned folding chairs. Needless to say, some of us instantly became very close friends with the strangers sitting next to us. (My neighbor was Anthony) The folding chairs were also at least an inch and a half taller, drag for me.

Obstructions and obstacles aside, The show was quite pleasant, very cute, but musically a bit under par. The venue’s sound seemed poorly mixed and hard to control. Neither those in charge of lighting nor live sound had much to work with as all of the sound came from a pair of speaker stacks on each side of the stage at the front of the house. The makeshift stage didn’t so much elevate the band as turn them into pinball machine bumpers for the PA and stage sound.

The openers Lavender Diamond bantered nicely with the crowd and were a complementary warm-up for She & Him; but the songs were far too simple to warrant the 6+ minutes that they seemed to drag on. Zooey joined the band for a song, but like I said lasted waaay too long.

To get it out of the way Zooey Deschanel is adorable. Quite literally one of the most beautiful people to walk the earth. M. Ward is nearly equally fantastic. But the show was very ok to pretty good in the grand scheme of things. It had some nicer moments, like the vocal breakdown in “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” and of course their beautiful cover of Smokey’s “You Really Gotta Hold On Me” but really, how could you fuck that up? Still the show fell very short in comparison to either the previous time i’d seen M.Ward perform or the maybe 2 dozen female fronted bands/singer-songwriters I saw last year working in the same style. The band seemed very loose. But to their defense the problem was probably that they couldn’t hear each other because of the room’s acoustics; which seemed to pit the bass and drums against each other in Mortal Kombat. Rough spots showed through especially in an uncomfortably hurried version of “I Was Made For You” which left Zooey stumbling on what should have been a very strong melody.

To toot my Nebraska horn I recognized the bassist as Stefanie Drootin from Tim Kasher’s Cursive side-project The Good Life. To my own credit, i knew who the bassist would be before she even took the stage when I saw Ward sound-checking her instrument. I’m that good.

Ultimately I feel a show like She & Him would have translated much better at a smaller venue such as Spaceland. That also would have spared me the pain of dishing out 8 bucks for a tiny whiskey drink. I know it’s L.A. but give me a break! I honestly didn’t think that the act as a whole had the confidence to pull of a show of that size, perhaps after a run of smaller shows they will be a much better live act. Not many bands in L.A. have paid their dues and on occasions like this, it shows. I don’t recommend paying $25 to see anything at the Vista, either.

Coming 2009. 94 MPG.

(photo is just a concept, probably not the actual model)

My hometown of Grand Island, Nebraska was known for years (and still is I believe) as a METH CAPITOL. For shame? Fuck No! I take it as a point of pride! Let me tell you what, buddy, for a town of 50,000 it’s good to be known for anything at all. Being the birthplace of Henry Fonda and the site of the “Night of the Twisters” just wasn’t keeping us going, it took the phenomena of blue collar workers, bored teenagers, and plenty of empty space to make us the absolute best place to make, sell, and distribute Crystal Meth. If it sounds like an advertisement, it is! My hometown was awesome! I wish that I could live there now… but still live in L.A. of course. Not because of the Meth but because it’s so fucking fun to watch!

My hometown is what I would call a very small pond. And in this pond there are many, many odd fishes. Kinda like when they build new unmanned submarines that can dive to parts of the ocean that have never been seen by man and there are all of those fish that have glowing lights and strange tentacles and bug eyes… same thing. Sometimes I wish I could go there to disconnect ya know? Just do like 2 designs a month just to pay my 300 bucks a month rent (FOR A HOUSE) and drink $1.75 Miller High Life at a dive bar. The only problem, almost all of the eligible females moved away and went to college never to return.

But it would also be great to live there because there is so much that you could do FOR a place like that. When I was growing up we had NOTHING to do. Seriously. We used to have to put on DIY concerts there because there was no place to play music. We had a venue for a while but the city closed it down (the alley was the restroom) and also the rent money was used for, wait for it… that’s right, METH!

When I lived there, I always told my friends, “Wouldn’t it be weird to be proud of where you came from?” and it was true. I hated the place, it did nothing for me or ANY of its youth and I ran away as soon as I could. But a couple years ago I realized that I was proud of where I came from because it was such a shithole. It motivated me to get out and see as much of the world as I could. Until I got trapped here (damnit). But I still have a sense of pride in knowing that I wanted to get out and do something with my life, and I think I did. I just bought my airline tickets for my 10-year high school reunion in July and I can’t wait to go back.