New Yorker Interview with Conor Oberst

[DudeAsInCool]

He’s Wide Awake, He’s Talking

Issue of 2005-02-07

Posted 2005-01-31

This week in the magazine and here online (see The Critics), Sasha Frere-Jones writes about the singer-songwriter Conor Oberst, the leader of the band Bright Eyes, which has just released two new records, “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” and “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn.” Here Frere-Jones talks to Oberst about his work, his influences, and an inopportune meeting with Björk.

SASHA FRERE-JONES: On your records, you sometimes work with a gigantic band. But I’m guessing that you’re not a bandleader in the traditional sense. How do you work with large numbers of musicians?

CONOR OBERST: The “Lifted” album, in 2002, was me and the producer Mike Mogis and this other friend of ours, Andy LeMaster. When I’m arranging stuff with Mike, since we don’t write out music, I write a lot of parts on keyboard. Then we show the cello part to the cello player, and half of it makes sense and half of it doesn’t, and he’ll say, “You can’t really play that.”

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