Better Oblivion Community Center
Bowery Ballroom
∙
New York
Friday, March 29 at 8 pm EDT
Concert Venue
Friday, March 29 at 8 pm EDT
Concert Venue
Entry Options
Details
Description
It’s so great to see you guys. Phoebe, I like your hair yellow like that. Is it Manic
Panic?
Phoebe: No.
It’s got a sort of grunge vibe. Did you know that in dream analysis the color yellow
is symbolic of intellect, energy, agility, happiness, harmony, and wisdom?
Phoebe: Of course.
So, first thing’s first: Better Oblivion Community Center. I heard you guys were
visiting Forest Lawn Cemetery - which we’ll talk about again in a minute - and you
took a selfie to post on Instagram, up by where they have that statue of David
there, it’s bigger than the actual statue of David in Florence, I think, and you guys
noticed in the location tagging that there were a lot of geolocation options in other
languages...I guess...Armenian? Mandarin? Korean?
Conor: Burmese.
Yeah! Burmese. Right?And then you tagged your location but later on you typed
those characters into Google Translate and it turned out not to be tagged from
“Forest Lawn”. It actually translated as “Better Oblivion Community Center”. Is
that right?
Conor: (laughs) No.
Really?! Cuz I heard that and I thought that was so cool! Where did the name come
from then?
Phoebe: Do people care where the name came from?
Conor: Nah.
Alright. We can leave that in, I guess we answered it... So let’s get to when you two
met. It was a show at the Bootleg in LA, and Conor you were playing a secret show
and Phoebe, your friend at the venue got you to open for them. This was July 2016,
so before Stranger In The Alps was out, and Conor, you were there early enough to
watch her set. And afterwards you asked her to send you her record. You must’ve
really been impressed with her set.
Conor: Yeah. It was a weird thrown together show. A lot of people played short sets, like Gillian
Welch and Jim James. Kyle, who put on the show, said Phoebe was his favorite songwriter in
LA, so I was excited to check it out. I was immediately struck by her voice. There are not a lot of
people whose voice stops you in your tracks like that.
I bet you get people trying to send you their music all the time. Everywhere you go,
right?
Conor: Kinda.
But you actually asked for hers.
Conor: I did.
And then you invited her to open for you on tour.
Conor: Yeah.
That was the Salutations tour?
Conor: Ruminations .
Right yeah, Ruminations. And you guys would do “Lua” together on the road?
Phoebe: Sometimes.
So then you guys would guest at each others shows, right? And Conor, you were
spending a lot of time in Los Angeles around this time. Cuz you’ve been in Omaha
mostly the past few years but you have a spot in LA, on the West Side.
Conor: East side.
Right, and so you guys would show up and guest at shows. And you’re on Phoebe’s
song “Would You Rather”. So really early on you started collaborating on music,
right? That was kind of an immediate spark, this instinct to perform and sing
together. And your voices, they really compliment one another. There’s something
really special about when you duet. Particularly when you sing in unison, it really
works. Phoebe, you have a really sweet, crystal clear voice and Conor, yours is
more world weary and raspy, so there’s something really striking about them
together.
Conor: I guess that’s one way to look at it. I wouldn’t necessarily say Phoebe’s voice is crystal
clear. At least not in a Mickey Mouse way. I think it’s textured in a very unique and interesting
way. In that she can sing anything and there is a certain gravity to it that other voices don’t
bring.
Phoebe: I do agree that Conor’s voice is pretty raspy.
Right, yeah. That’s true, “gravity” is a perfect word for it. And you know, I say ‘in
unison’, it’s from the Latin. It means, literally, ‘one sound’ but when you guys sing
together it’s really not, it’s incredibly rich because you get both these different
emotions from the exact same lyrics. The sort of clear eyed optimistic sound of
Phoebe’s vocal and then the more seasoned sound of Conor’s.
Conor: Sure.
The first song you wrote together is the first song on the album, “I Didn’t Know
What I Was In For” and at that time you weren’t really thinking it would be a whole
album but you knew you wanted it to be its own thing, not a Phoebe Bridgers &
Conor Oberst album of acoustic songs?
Phoebe: Yeah, we didn’t know if it would be a single or an EP or what, but we knew we wanted to
try writing together and for it to have its own identity with a band name.
When you’re out touring, you’re on the bus and you’re playing songs to pass the
time, right? There’s a photo of you in the album artwork, Phoebe you have a guitar
on your lap and you’re both surrounded by this incredible mess of the tour bus. A
lot of milk cartons, snack wrappers and piles of dirty clothes and just general
mess. Is channeling the chaos of a bus tour into the structure of a song something
you usually do?
Phoebe: I’m actually holding an acoustic bass in that photo.
Conor: We wrote in LA, mostly.
Ah, okay. But you wrote them together. It’s not like Conor would have a song and
send it to you, or you would have a song and he would just add bits to it. These
songs you guys sat down and wrote together. In the same room?
Phoebe: Yeah.
You guys obviously compliment each other vocally, we talked about that, but you
also feel an affinity with one another in that you admire each other’s songwriting.
And you both generally write alone, right? It’s not your usual thing to write a song
with someone else.
Phoebe: I write with my friends a lot.
Conor: I don’t have any friends.
Did you guys ever sit down and talk about themes or how you wanted the album to
sound? Did you discuss what kind of songs they’d be or did you just sit down and
start writing to see what would happen?
Phoebe: We knew we wanted to play with a band, so we kept that in mind while we were writing
stuff.
Did you see that Nick Cave documentary? Where he’s in the studio writing with
Warren Ellis and he says if they’re not having terrible ideas that they have to walk
back they know they’re not getting anywhere? They call it the “Walk Of Shame”,
when you have to walk back an idea that didn’t work. Have you done the “Walk Of
Shame”?
Phoebe & Conor (in unison): Yeah.
One of my favorites is “Forest Lawn”. People outside of Los Angeles might not
know that it’s the largest cemetery in LA. And it’s very beautiful, I should add.
There’s something so sweet about the song but it’s essentially about losing
someone and wanting to get them back. “Dig you out”, you say. It’s not really about
exhuming someone. Or maybe it is? Maybe it’s the sweetest song about exhuming a
corpse ever written?
Phoebe: It’s not not about exhuming someone.
Music critics have spilled a lot of ink over your guys work. I’m not even gonna try.
But can you describe each other’s song writing in three words?
Phoebe: Cis white male.
Conor: (laughs)
I think if I heard you two had made an album I might’ve expected something a bit
different. Because it sounds so much like a band, it might not be exactly what
people would guess it’s gonna sound like. It’s got a great synergy. And you put
together an awesome group of musicians for it. You guys have got Nick Zinner
from Yeah Yeah Yeahs - he plays guitar on “Dylan Thomas” and “Dominoes”. And
you’ve got Carla Azar from Autolux, she’s also Jack White’s drummer, she’s on
about half the record. Conor, you’ve played with her before, haven’t you? She
played on the last Bright Eyes’ album The People’s Key.
Conor: Yes. She’s great.
And Nick Zinner is someone you’ve been friends with for years. He played a lot on
your record Digital Ash In A Digital Urn and toured as part of Bright Eyes back in
2006/ 2007?
Conor: 2004/2005.
And you’ve got the rhythm section from Dawes, Wylie Gelber and Griffin
Goldsmith, who you’ve also toured with. They were your backing band on the
Upside Down Mountain tour.
Conor: Yeah.
And some other talented friends, songwriter Christian Lee Hutson on guitar, and
Anna Butterss on bass. They both played bass in Phoebe’s touring band at different
times, right? How would you compare them as players?
Phoebe: They’re both good, a lot different stylistically.
And you produced it yourselves with Andy LeMaster. Andy’s someone you’ve
worked with for almost your whole career, Conor. So he’s someone you trust?
Conor: Absolutely.
There’s so many great lines on this album. A lot to unpack. You can really lose
yourself in it. Do you have a favorite lyric? Or maybe a favorite lyric that the other
one came up with?
Conor: We pretty much wrote everything together, so it’s hard to remember who wrote what.
You’re going to tour this record in March and April. You’re putting a band together
for it now, right?
Phoebe: Yeah.
I wanted to talk about “Dylan Thomas” cuz that’s the first single, right? It’s the first
single and the last song you wrote for the album. There’s a lot of death and ghosts
on the album, and mentions of illness and feeling unwell and being anxious - and
those are things you’ve both written about a lot - which is partly why this
collaboration works so well. Dylan Thomas, we all know, is the esteemed Welsh
poet who died in 1953 at the age of 39. He’s mentioned for ‘dying on the barroom
floor’ and you know, he was definitely a big drinker. He was drinking at the White
Horse in the West Village every night he was in New York before he died. And he
fell into a coma at the Chelsea Hotel and died soon after at Saint Vincent’s on 8th
Avenue. Did you know that he actually died of emphysema, pneumonia and
bronchitis? And that in November 1953, the month he died, over 200 people died
in New York City from air pollution? He probably died from smog.
Phoebe: Huh.
I should ask why you released this as a surprise.
Phoebe: We love surprises.
I guess my last question is do you think this is a one off or do you think there will
be more Better Oblivion Community Center albums to follow?
Conor: Your guess is as good as ours.
Guys, thanks for your time.