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Conor Oberst has been taking a break from the Bright Eyes reunion lately to play star-studded weekly Thursday night residencies in LA and NYC. These shows are billed as Conor Oberst And Friends, and out West, those friends included his Better Oblivion Community Center bandmate Phoebe Bridgers among others like Oberst’s fellow Monster Of Folk M. Ward and Azure Ray’s Maria Taylor.
At this point we’re three weeks into the New York leg of this extravaganza, and as Brooklyn Vegan points out, last night’s gig at Bowery Ballroom was speckled with big names from the indie rock world. Other than a cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Devil Town” early on and the Oberst solo track “I Don’t Want To Die (In the Hospital)” during the encore, the set was exclusively Bright Eyes songs. But the band he assembled for the occasion included Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, Yeah Yeah Yeahs members Brian Chase and Nick Zinner, the Strokes’ Nikolai Fraiture, LCD Soundsystem’s Nancy Whang, and Clark Baechle of fellow Omaha/Saddle Creek heroes the Faint.
People in interviews always talk about Oberst throwing together temporary lineups for Bright Eyes on the fly back in the day, and this summoning of the cast of Meet Me In The Bathroom feels like a callback to that kind of spontaneity. Check out the setlist and lots of footage from the show below.
SETLIST:
“Firewall”
“Devil Town”
“The Calendar Hung Itself…”
“Take It Easy (Love Nothing)”
“Don’t Know When But A Day Is Gonna Come”
“Sunrise, Sunset”
“Light Pollution”
“Down In A Rabbit Hole”
“Hit The Switch”
“False Advertising”
“Mariana Trench”
“Old Soul Song (For The New World Order)”
“I Believe In Symmetry”
Encore:
“Lover I Don’t Have To Love”
“I Don’t Want to Die (In The Hospital)”
“True Blue”