Upside Down Mountain

It's a record this restless artist can settle into and build on as he continues to mature, because it solves his chronic problems while presenting huim with a newfound sweet spot. [Jul 2014, p.82]

On the whole, for an artist so spectral and kaleidoscopic, Upside Down Mountain is a pretty sweet ride.

Upside Down Mountain suggests that he's starting to move into a new period of his career where he can use his wisdom to write songs that are passionate in a new, more mature way, without having to try to dredge up an old fire that doesn't quite burn as violently anymore.

Upside Down Mountain is a curious, if occasionally disturbing pleasure to listen to. Just don't expect answers when you turn it right side up.

By the end, Upside Down Mountain sounds like a rejuvenation. In Wilson, Oberst has found an editor who will reward future collaborations.

Upside Down Mountain establishes the songwriter as a career-musician, one who probably won’t be forgotten for a while yet.

Conor Oberst has long exhibited an affinity for reinvention. One thing remains consistent, however, and it’s abundant on his latest: a raw laying bare of emotion delivered with a poet’s ear for lyrical specificity.

Upside Down Mountain is a great achievement and Conor Oberst’s best work to date.

Upside Down Mountain doesn’t take too many chances and, while I’m usually all for evolution, this is a good thing for Conor Oberst.

If Oberst is, indeed, learning to pull back, it’s a work in progress. Most of these cryptic ramblers could lose a verse or two and still make pretty much the same amount of sense.

All of Mr. Oberst’s gifts align on Upside Down Mountain: his empathy, his unassumingly natural melodies, the quavery sincerity in his voice, the plain-spoken but telling lyrics that he’s now careful to deliver clearly.

For possibly the first time ever, it's hard to tell if he's trying too hard or not trying hard enough. [No. 109, p.56]

It all harks back to the word-in-your-ear confessionals of ‘Fevers And Mirrors’. Were it not for the whimsical, country-tropical jangle of ‘Hundreds Of Ways’, Upside Down Mountain would very nearly be its equal.

The album is 55 minutes of simplistic storytelling, Oberst’s ever recognizable vocals and a whole lot of heart. If you’ve been an Oberst fan at any point of his career before 2009, it’s a record that’s easy to fall in love with.

Oberst remains an eccentric--he's not one for obvious hooks, or even insistent melodies--but of all his albums, Upside-Down Mountain feels open-hearted, measured, and bright, the kind of record that opens up a new chapter in a career and possibly wins over new listeners.

Upside Down Mountain shows that quality songcraft is still alive in Conor Oberst, and it is just a little bit of plastic surgery away from being relevant again.

Here, as he seemingly aims for something like hard-won, grizzled wisdom, he often trips over his own lyrical ambition.

Oberst's unmistakable voice, songwriting style, and melodic tendencies ground the album, but you have to wade through generic instrumentation and glossy production to find it.

On the plus side of the ledger, you can understand what the hell Oberst is talking about most of the time on Upside Down Mountain, which makes it an immediate improvement over Cassadaga and The People’s Key, two albums that somehow managed to be cryptic and pedantic at the same time.... But elsewhere on Upside Down Mountain, he wields populist observation like a politician, trying to utilize his homespun wisdom from an elevated plane.

A sumptuous immersion in Seventies California folk pop, it is the most immediately charming album he has ever made.

Melodies emerge strongly from these simple musical settings and there's little to distract from his lyrics, which explore solitude and regret--those hoary old staples of US road music - in rich and inventive ways.

Although Upside Down Mountain could do with a little more lyrical variety and structural experimentation, it is strong.

It is also one of his most consistently rewarding efforts since the heady early records.

His songs no longer have the raw-nerve urgency they once did, which makes Upside Down Mountain a pleasantly peaceful listen, but lacking the power and urgency of his best work.

It's a testament to Oberst's enduring versatility that Upside Down Mountain can accommodate the antic creepiness of "Governor's Ball" as well as the transcendent uplift of "Time Forgot," but the album's moments of sentimentality make Oberst sound like just another chart-climbing purveyor of feel-good folky schlock.

Double Life, a thoughtful country-blues, is actually deeply touching, and Night At Lake Unknown is a soft, sweet Hank Williams Lament. the rest can be broadly summerised as Eeyore on Quaaludes. [Jun 2014, p.94]

It's still familiar emotional portraiture, but these scenes often appear through a high-powered telescope instead of a magnifying glass. [Jun 2014, p.106]

Some of the fragile innocence may have been replaced by moments of casual philosophy and effortlessly grandiose anthemic pop (‘Zigzagging Toward The Light’, ‘Kick’), but Oberst can still throw out quietly stirring minor epics using little more than a guitar and quiet musings.

The imagery threaded throughout is at once arresting and functions on multiple levels, but perhaps its greatest achievements arrive in the form of songs like ‘Double Life’ and, pertinently, ‘You Are Your Mother’s Child’.