Conor Oberst makes records even on his Mexican vacations

 

Most 28-year-old fellows have a hard time standing upright or maintaining consciousness during vacations to Mexico with their buddies. But leave it to Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst to return from his sun worship with another gosh darn album in his quiver. The album "Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band," his first venture under his legal name since his teenage years, is out on Merge Records this August (a break from longtime home Saddle Creek), and Oberst's website is streaming two new songs from it. The album was recorded in a makeshift studio in Tepoztlan, a mountain village apparently famed for alien encounters and its history in Aztec animism. The record features a gang of Saddle Creek affiliates who sound like they're having a blast playing tequila-addled blues-punk numbers they probably wrote before breakfast each day -- "Souled Out!!!" has somebody audibly asking what part comes next in the bridge. Oberst has been on quite a magick kick in recent years, so here's hoping that this jaunt brought some needed R&R, and from the looks of the album art, it did. The band plays the Troubadour on Aug. 5; get in line early.

-- August Brown

Photo of Conor Oberst courtesy of Butch Walker