Last night the Mystic Valley Band dropped by The Late Late Show a few months after sharing “Moab” during the week of Conor Oberst‘s release. (UPDATE: Astute commenter Tim notes the band’s identical outfits in both performances. This was prerecorded!) “Cape Canaveral,” which floats familial themes over references to ancient mythology and memories of the Space Coast, opens the album on a spiritual note. Unfortunately James Lipton wasn’t on hand to introduce it, but the ever excitable Craig Ferguson seems to be a big Bright Eyes fan.
Love the “victory’s sweet even deep in the cheap seats” part. Conor Oberst is out now on Merge.
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This is quite a beautiful performance of an already beautiful song!
Explain to me again why Conor Oberst is still relevant?
Aww come on man. This song is great, and the album is just as nice. Can we ever have a post full of commenters with NICE things to say? If he ain’t relevant to you, then I don’t know, skip over the post WITH HIS NAME IN THE TITLE and pass go. See, see what you did there? Now I look like an angry commenter and I actually enjoy this song and performance. AARRGH!
I think he is still relevant because the good music he makes. However, since the attention span of most ‘music fans’ is less than 15 seconds then it is logical that he is no longer relevant.
because he made a few great albums and people need to keep an eye on him in case he ever fulfills those terrible bob dylan prophecies
Also: While I’m not a big fan of his S/T, this performance was really good. A lot of times I think his live stuff is better than recorded. So, I ain’t no hater, but the hype surrounding his good albums is what keeps him in the limelight. Plus, he’s consistently better than terrible.
Wow, god damn this is a beautiful song! Why don’t I own this album already? I wish there were more songs like this in the world and fewer douchey assholes like Aaron… Ah, what a lovely place that would be.
Aaron, aaron, aaron…..
Really? I scrolled down to read the comments just because I wanted to see if anyone else was as impacted by that performace as I was. I don’t really know what you mean by relevant. He just came out with a self-titled album less than half a year ago and he was on Craig Ferguson the other night. How is that not relevant? Sufjan Stevens is one of my favorite musicians but I didn’t question why he was voted number 4 on “Indie Rock Crushes of 2008″ when he didn’t even come out with an album this year. I didn’t question, because who cares what’s relevant?!
Sorry, I’m done venting.
This performance is really great, by the way. I almost cried while watching it.
does anyone else notice that the band is wearing exactly the same thing they wore at their previous performance on this show? and ferguson doesn’t come over to shake hands with the band like hosts usually do. i smell stock footage.
hmm…. that is a different version than they have been playing live recently. nice catch.
i don’t know tim/stereogum. He seems to wear that a lot. for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k4Qm8cMJMk
I mean. why wouldn’t someone wear the same clothes more than once? i do.
They are all wearing the same outfits,
I think the word relevant is used way too much in people’s posts. Maybe we should check to see if the word relevant is still relevant.
Alternate title: Nation Fell Asleep Four Minutes Early Last Night.
WOW…very clever…how long did it take you to think of that one?
Absolutely lovely, great job for being negative about this.
Looks like the dude is tired. But, I’m thinking it’s a just an act before he tears another asshole in the music scene with something wonderful.
I’m not a very big Conor Oberst fan at all (not in the slightest really), but I enjoyed this performance quite a bit. It was nice, simple, and well-executed. Modern music could use a lot more of that. Originality isn’t the end all be all people make it out to be. Sometimes hearing a beautiful song performed professionally is vastly superior to anything that sounds “new”.
Relevant is such a lame idea in music. What does that even mean? Being the overhyped band of the week? I’d say that most “relevant” music is more likely to be forgotten than things the music nerds deem cool. I wouldn’t be surprised if 20 years from now if Conor Oberst had built up a fairly solid back catalog and stable career. I really doubt the same can be said for Vampire Weekend, Santogold, No Age, or any of the other groups on so many top ten lists this year. And this is from someone who really ISN’T a Conor Oberst fan at all.
Let’s look at Pitchfork’s top 20 albums of 2000. It includes such bands as “Gas” “Two Lone Swordsman” “Summer Hymns” and “King Biscuit Time”. In 2016, this years list will be equally as silly.
My thoughts exactly
Yeah I completely agree with the above comment. I look at it like this: people that consider themselves to be “indie” usually have to have some kind of gimmick to be accepted in this elite (I use this word very loosely) group of people. For most indie people, that just means being quirky, especially when it comes to listening music. Most of the music that Pitchfork tells me is cool I can’t even listen to. So it doesn’t surprise me that people would hate on this lovely song. When I saw Conor Oberst perform a couple of months ago, this was easily my favorite song live. The whole crowd literally went silent. Great, great stuff. So to all the haters out there, go jerk off to Fuck Buttons or some other equally “hip” band right now.
conor haters on this site = boo, hiss. go be hip & indie somewhere else.
love the new album. saw him perform in seattle three times in ’08, one being a killer show at easy street. ‘cape live at both neumos & showbox = killer. also love breezy, gentlemen’s pack [aka smoke signals], sausilito, don’t wann die and milk thistle.
keep up the good work conor. can’t wait for what’s next.’
Why is he still relevant? Cause he is one of the best if not the best songwriter in the world. That’s why you tasteless indie of the month phillistines.
although i agree that he is indeed one of my favorite songwriters in todays music world, you gotta realize that its comments like these that only fuel what people will say negatively about him.
always been a fan of Conor, although I can’t say the s/t delivers in the way cassadega did (and how could it? it’s so stripped down.) but with that said, it’s interesting to see the impact of Mike Mogis has on this music (this album is entirely without Mogis). It’s pretty wild how much that dude contributes to every SC related band.
He wore the same for Reading and Leeds festivals over here in England.
His performance at Reading was massively dissapointing IMO.