Bright Eyes/Conor Oberst get a lot of shit for being pretentious/hysterical/naive/not Dylan (can we retire that comparison for all future singer-songwriters please?). But I’m a big fan of young Conor because I respect artists who lay everything out there and leave nothing held back, rendering themselves emotionally naked in front of an audience. A song like “Hot Knives” from 2007’s excellent Cassadaga does that in a subtle way, telling a complex and nuanced story with passion and a fine eye for human behavior, and that’s no small accomplishment to stuff into a hard charging 4-minute tune.

Not to mention that young Conor is seriously musically gifted (certainly another source of the sometimes irrational criticism he can provoke among the less talented), with a lyrical sensibility that can be poetic, strident, political and vulnerable, often within the same song. He doesn’t always find the mark and I wish he would lose the gimmick of adding long passages of mystical mumbo jumbo to certain album tracks. And some still carp that this is youth music, too agitating and hypersensitive to appeal to a mature audience. Having been to a Bright Eyes concert I’d have to agree that the fan base seems to be 25 or younger, as well as complete believers. But good Rock ‘n Roll has always largely been for and about the young and their passions and idealism and pain. To dismiss such ambitious and raucously independent music on those terms is to admit to trying to be some sort of arbiter of “mature tastes”. And who the hell wants to be that guy?