ESP is real. Conor Oberst, you must know I love you.

*You should also know I'm waiting to meet up in New York to drink macchiatos, share existential musings, and sing backup on your next album that we self-release together on an independent label.

+ + +

Anyone who has been to a Bright Eyes/Monsters of Folk/Desaparecidos/Commander Venus show could tell you there are a healthy handful of young women who are most definitely NOT afraid to confess their love of Conor from the top of their lungs, albeit from the bowels of the audience seats.

Whether in the middle of a slow, quiet song, during a banjo-flickering romp, between tunes, or in the middle of Conor's own monologue, the inevitable shrieks are as predictable as the shows male to female ratio: "CONOR, I love YOU!"

Eyes roll. Other women sneer from afar.  Men sigh with jealousy.  He's the poster child of indie rock for goodness sake! 

While the "I love you's" are disgustingly cliche, somewhere inside myself I'm thinking the same damn thing... I, too, want Conor to hear and understand how his words and voice have spoken to me on plane rides across the globe, late nights alone on the couch, on long drives through mountains and valleys, or in the backseat of a land rover whilst road tripping through southern Africa. 

It's due time I curated a selection of Conor's finest work, a gushing and admittedly loving ode to the Bright-Eyed idie rock prince himself.  No need to say more than to simply recognize his creativity and document the years of tear-stained, soul-searching journal entries that this list represents.

The List

*Tracks which are italicized reference brilliance
and are linked to strange youtube montages

Album: Monsters of Folk, 2009
Track(s): Temazcal, Ahead of the Curve, His Masters Voice

Album: Dark Was The Night (Red Hot Compilation), 2009
Track: Lua (with Gillian Welch)

Album: Outer South (Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band), 2009
Track(s): Ten Women, Nikorette, White Shoes

Album: Conor Oberst (self titled), 2008
Track(s): Sausalito, Cape Canaveral, Get Well Cards, Moab, Souled Out!!!, Milk Thistle

Album: Gentleman's Pact (EP), 2008
Track: Breezy

Album: Cassadaga, 2007
Tracks(s): Four Winds, Hot Knives, Classic Cars, Cleanse Song

Album: I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, 2005
Track(s): We Are Nowhere And It's Now, Old Soul Song, First Day of My Life, Land Locked Blues, Poison Oak

Album: Digital Ash in Digital Urn, 2005
Track: Arc of Time (Time Code)

Album: Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, 2002

Track: Lover I Don't Have to Love

+++

*Best Album Nod: I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, 2005

Conor and his most noteworthy collaboration, Bright Eyes, at their purest moments...