- Record Label: Dead Oceans
- Release Date: Jan 24, 2019
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Jan 25, 2019It’s full of charming melodies, carefully placed harmonies, and biting lyrics from two of the most influential songwriters around. Some days you just get lucky.
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Feb 4, 2019Better Oblivion Community Center is the kind of warm and fuzzy record that provides listeners with a soul-lifting ending no matter which path they choose--to collapse into the arms of its devastating lyrical woe or to jump onstage with Oberst and Bridgers and bask in its giddy musical benevolence.
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Jan 28, 2019This is a cohesive, creative, and multi-faceted record that will over-joy fans of both artists while offering the spark of magic that so rarely comes with these kinds of collaborations.
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Mar 6, 2019They turn their wit into complex sentiments, making for an album that encompasses more than it delineates, even as the writing stays specific. Two voices don’t make for a proper community center, but they do make for something potent in a potentially bleak context.
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Mar 4, 2019This is a ‘supergroup’ refreshingly free of ego and filled with supremely listenable songs.
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Feb 4, 2019Ultimately, with such amazing writers, this album's going to drill deep down into you and leave you missing the things you need in life. The persons you love and the moments you may think's best to forget.
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Jan 31, 2019Recorded last summer in Los Angeles, their debut 10-track album effortlessly showcases both Oberst’s and Bridgers’s strengths as songwriters who are unafraid of literate vulnerability as they explore subjects like loneliness, privilege and estranged family.
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Jan 31, 2019The self-titled record, a loose but beautifully crafted collection of folk-rock songs, explores the kinds of anxieties intrinsic to the modern age--the longing to be at once noticed and invisible; the paralysing effects of limitless information, and the desire to do good versus the desire to be seen doing good.
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Jan 28, 2019Succeeds as a standalone work, regardless of its authors’ statuses in the indie-folk world.
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Jan 24, 2019The best parts of the album, though, are the moments where it doesn't sound exactly like anything either artist has released before (songs like "My City," and closing pair "Big Black Heart" and "Dominos"), yet still shows two songwriters at the height of their talents.
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Jan 24, 2019The duo harmonize beautifully, Oberst’s voice often just a brooding floorboard creak behind Bridgers’ brightly bloodshot confidences (see “Chesapeake”). As personas, they’re a duo of damaged survivors, a more dissolute version of Please Like Me’s Josh and Arnold.
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Jan 24, 2019Despite the wide range of aesthetics on the record, however, there are no two ways about it; this thing is bloody gorgeous. Two of the most adept singer-songwriters in haunting, poignant melancholy, the beauty to Better Oblivion Community Center lies exactly where you’d expect.
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Jan 24, 2019Better Oblivion Community Center isn’t an obvious step forward for either artist but it’s a generous and grounded collection of songs, showcasing the complementary talents of two of America’s most talented songwriters. By the crackling close of final track Dominos, you’re more than glad they opened their doors.
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Jan 24, 2019If you like your music heavy with feels, story and a tangible sense of nostalgia, this is for you. Oberst and Bridgers have created one of those rare collaborative albums that rank with the best efforts of the respective artists.
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Jan 24, 2019A ten-track album that combines both of their styles to create something that doesn’t sound quite like either of them.
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Jan 25, 2019Better Oblivion is a collection of quiet, wandering thoughts: the sound of twin souls burrowing deeper into their common ground.
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Jan 29, 2019In Better Oblivion Community Center, Oberst and Bridgers have made a true collaboration, finding a middle ground between their experiences and styles that is truly fertile. All of this is to say that the surprise of Better Oblivion Community Center may only comprise a few genuine surprises, but even what’s predictable about it is utterly lovable and well worth your time.
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Jan 28, 2019More a revitalizing burst of energy than a passing of the torch, Better Oblivion Community Center frequently finds Bridgers and Oberst bringing out the best of each other.
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UncutFeb 22, 2019If Better Oblivion Community Center has a recurring flaw, it's a reluctance to hit these higher gears more often, the best of BOCC, however, both earns its place in Oberst's already formidable canon, and further confirms Bridgers as an artist likely to assemble one. [Apr 2019, p.37]
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Feb 21, 2019While both performers are too iconic for Better Oblivion Community Center to truly feel separate from their respective bodies of work, there's still a strange magic that comes from the combination.
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Feb 4, 2019Better Oblivion Community Center acts like something cultish, but it’s really an excellent collection of songs by two great lyricists. Neither really plays too far out of their comfort zone (even if “Exception to the Rule” brings back some Digital Ash nuances) but both lend themselves to the other. The result is an excellent addition to each artist's catalogue.
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Jan 31, 2019The songs on Better Oblivion Community Center are contemplative rather than declarative, granting the artists a chance to approach sorrow in a cheekier manner and find reserves of hope amid the wreckage.
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Q MagazineFeb 13, 2019These are songs concerned with the transient, the fleeting, but no matter how long this partnership endures, this is a solid monument. [Apr 2019, p.110]
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Jan 25, 2019Their album is mostly the sum of its parts: hushed, literate songwriting where his boyish croak meets her anguished sweetness. Occasionally, subtle touches shift the atmosphere.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 36 out of 42
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Mixed: 4 out of 42
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Negative: 2 out of 42
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Dec 1, 2019
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Jun 12, 2019