Right around the time the clocks switched over from 2018 to 2019, a mysterious ad appeared on a bus bench in Los Angeles, near the intersection of Sunset and Alvarado. It promoted something called the Better Oblivion Community Center, which offers âassisted self-careâ and âfree human empathy screening,â among other vaguely New Agey services. A telephone number led callers to a voice mail for this strange clinic, and the website included no explanatory text beyond a registration form for a free brochure. It sounds like one of those odd storefronts youâd see in a Los Angeles strip mall offering a hodgepodge of healing techniques and questionable diet regimensâthe kind of place Oh No Ross & Carrie might devote an episode or two to exploring and debunking.
It turns out, however, that the Better Oblivion Community Center is not, in fact, a clinic or a church, but a band consisting of two ace singer-songwriters: Conor Oberst, the guy behind Bright Eyes and Desaparecidos, and Phoebe Bridgers, a solo artist who made her debut with 2017âs Stranger in the Alps and more recently was one-third of the indie-rock supergroup Boygenius. The bus ad was, in a roundabout way, an announcement for the duoâs self-titled debut, which they are surprise-releasing this week, following a performance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
âThose words sound nice together, and it rolls off the tongue, even though itâs long,â says Oberst of the duoâs moniker. âMore than that, at this moment in time everyone is feeling a little impending doom, like oblivion is just around the corner. But the idea of the community center means that youâre not alone in it. Weâre all going through this moment in time together, so maybe itâs not all doom and gloom in there. Maybe thereâs some hopefulness in that community concept.â
Thatâs a lot of weight to pin on an album, but Bridgers and Oberst explore that hope and dread on these songs, from the self-questioning âDidnât Know What I Was in Forâ to the self-annihilating âDylan Thomas.â The music is jittery-nerved folk-rock, full of jangly guitars and jumpy choruses, reflecting the musical personalities of these two musicians: the measured drama of Bridgersâ vocals clashing with the precision of Oberstâs lyrics.
The two met several years ago at a show in Los Angeles. After hearing her play a short set, Oberst asked Bridgers to send him any music she had. They played more shows together, toured together, and even duetted on Stranger in the Alps. After recording their first album as the Better Oblivion Community Center, they decided to keep it under their hats to preserve a bit of the mystery and to buy a bus bench rather than a billboard. âThere are no rules anymore,â says Oberst. âThis was an experiment. We wanted people to hear the album all at once and take it for what it is. That seemed a lot more fun that the textbook album release cycle.â
Was there a moment when you realized you could do something larger together?
Phoebe Bridgers: We didnât think about it that hard. I run stuff by my friends, and I write with a lot of my friends. Thatâs something I really enjoy doing. So I was showing Conor some of my songs, and he was showing me some of his songs. The album just emerged out of that. I donât think we ever talked about what style it would be. There was one time after one of our shows in Europe when Conor was like, âWe should start a band!â But we never talked about it again. So by the time we started writing songs, that wasnât even really a goal we had in mind. It just naturally became something more.
Conor Oberst: The first song we wrote is the first song on the record, which is âDidnât Know What I Was in For.â We wrote it not knowing if it was going to be for my record or her record or someone elseâs record. But we realized pretty quickly that it was meant to be its own thing. It snowballed from there.
See our ad at the corner of Sunset and Alvarado, or call our hotline (785) 433-5534 pic.twitter.com/EQ0N2ehaRK
â Better Oblivion Community Center (@better_oblivion) January 7, 2019
What was that process like? Was it different from other collaborations youâve done?
CO: We wrote all of them together with guitars. One of us would have a starting point, a little melody or a line or two of lyrics. Then itâs just bouncing ideas off each other. It was fun for me, because Iâve written songs with different people over the years, but Iâve never done a full record with only one other songwriter, where I was writing everything with one other person. It was an educational experience, because Phoebe has a lot of strengths that I donât have. Sheâs a much better singer, and has a much better concept of harmony and melody than I do. I would have some half-baked idea and say to her, âCan you make this better?â Or, âCan you make it sound like a complete thought?â And she would come up with some amazing idea that I would never have on my own.
PB: I actually feel similarly with lyrics. I would be on a rant about something and say, âI want this verse to be about insert theme here.â And Conor would just do it. I would have some idea or be talking about something for a long time, and the next time weâd sit down to write, he would have a cool lyric idea. It was nice to play to each otherâs strengths, especially since weâre very different in our processes.
How do you mean?
PB: It takes me forever to finish a song, but it takes Conor a day. I donât think itâs a bad thing to take forever, but Iâm a little too much of a perfectionist. I write from top to bottom, but Conor pushed me not to avoid anythingâjust write whatever and come back to it later. Donât get stuck for weeks at a time on something. But I tried to stretch out Conorâs writing time as well. What if we add another verse? Or, what if it was longer or we added a coda? In our differences we found a lot of fun stuff to do.
CO: I definitely tend to do something and just move on. Phoebe was like, âLetâs go back and think about that a little harder. Maybe we can make it better.â And usually we did. That was a great added layer of just⌠trying harder.
PB: Weirdly, âDylan Thomasâ was the last song we wrote for the album. I had spent fucking fourteen hours in the studio with my band Boygenius, and Conor and I were hanging out getting ready to record. We didnât even have a plan to put another song on there, but we had some extra time. Conor was like, âYou have any more ideas?â I had this weird voice memo that was just a verse and a chorus melody. We ended up writing that song in one day, which is super rare for me.
â Better Oblivion Community Center (@better_oblivion) January 16, 2019
You mentioned âDidnât Know What I Was in Forâ as the first song you wrote together. That really sets up this album and introduces some knotty, compelling themes.
CO: The idea is that we all want to do things to help make the world a better place, but a lot of the time it can feel futileâlike slacktivism or whatever. âOh, Iâll do a 5K run and cure cancer today.â I can do these little gestures in my life to bring about a better world, but maybe it doesnât do anything. I think those feeling are competing inside all of us. Everyone who has a conscience struggles with that. Am I doing enough? Do these actions have any value? The alternative, though, is to do nothing. And if everybody does nothing, then nothing gets better. So maybe itâs better to do these little gestures, even if they donât feel like theyâre ever enough.
PB: I always think about what my friend [and Boygenius bandmate] Julien Baker was telling me, about how she feels this weight of responsibility on social media. She feels this great duty every time she speaks to her fans for it to mean something, for it to matter. Why would you post all this bullshit about playing a festival when there are starving children and LGBTQ teenagers who donât have home? Sheâll talk about spending a half-hour drafting a tweet about something important, then sheâll scroll down and see some really crass, stupid joke that I posted. I think about that a lot. It feels like when you open that box of human empathy, itâs hard to shut. Thereâs a real burden of responsibility that every human being with a heart should feel, even if youâre doing something that feels so futile.
Does that apply to songwriting? Is writing a song enough?
CO: Thatâs a struggle that a lot of my friends and a lot of songwriters I know deal with. Phoebe and I were talking about it the other day while listening to the radio. Wow, most songs are about nothing at all. When you hear the lyrics, itâs either so abstract or insider baseball as far as what the writer is trying to say. It starts to evaporate and not mean anything.
PB: I hear the same songwriting tropes in so many songs. If I have to hear one more white guy sing about riding a trainâŚ
CO: Hey, careful there!
PB: If I have to hear one more guy talk about ruminations! [Ruminations is the title of Oberstâs recent album.] Trains and whiskey and turpentine. All the shit that doesnât resonate with anyone anymoreâI hear that in so many songs. Thereâs a fear of writing about nothing, but thereâs also a fear of sounding self-important. Itâs a never-ending struggle.
CO: Iâm hyperaware of sounding too preachy. Thatâs always the trickâto present ideas in a song but not do it too on the nose or in a way that sounds too heavy-handed.
That seems to be one of the overarching ideas youâre exploring on these songsâtrying to feel comfortable in your own skin, in the world, in your craft.
CO: Thatâs something that art and more specifically music can in their best form provide, that feeling of not feeling so alone. Weâre all going through this at this particular moment in time, globally and politically. It can feel terrifying and overwhelming. Lately I find myself going back to records I like, books and movies I like, stuff that provides some context on the human condition, so I donât feel as adrift and as alone in the world. I donât know if our music can do that for other people, but that would be a wonderful thing.
PB: We didnât set out to have a super-political theme on this record by any means. We barely even talked about it, but I think scenes emerge in songs that reflect what you feel or what youâre thinking about. A subtext emerges over time that maybe you didnât even intend. I think I relate to my songs the more space I get from them, for that reason. I feel more comfortable with songs I wrote two years ago. I was nervous singing about some of that stuff then. I think the same thing will happen with these songs and Iâll figure out more and more what the fuck weâre talking about.
It doesnât necessarily feel like a political album. It sounds more like itâs coming from a fixed perspective, two people taking in the world at a particular moment in time.
CO: I think youâre always writing from wherever youâre at in your life. We wrote all these songs in the span of a year, so itâs a snapshot of us at that time. Life goes on and things change, but thatâs one thing thatâs so cool about making a record: Itâs a little document of a moment that you get to keep forever. And even if it isnât as specific as a diary entry, it does encapsulate where you are in your life, where youâre writing from.
Photo credit: Nik Freitas