Better Oblivion Community Center

Better 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.

This 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.

They 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.

This is a ‘supergroup’ refreshingly free of ego and filled with supremely listenable songs.

Ultimately, 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.

Recorded 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.

The 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.

Succeeds as a standalone work, regardless of its authors’ statuses in the indie-folk world.

The 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.

The 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.

Despite 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.

Better 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.

If 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.

A ten-track album that combines both of their styles to create something that doesn’t sound quite like either of them.

Better Oblivion is a collection of quiet, wandering thoughts: the sound of twin souls burrowing deeper into their common ground.

In 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.

More 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.

If 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]

While 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.

Better 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.