For his second album with the five-piece Mystic Valley Band, Conor Oberst’s songwriting takes on a particularly old-timey tobacco- and bourbon-soaked personality, with Oberst also sharing vocal duties amongst the rest of the group.  A far cry from the teenage folksy confessionals of his early Bright Eyes years, Outer South is assertive country aesthetic with a grown-up, fully-realized sound. 

No doubt it surprised quite a few Oberst-ites last year when their young hero Conor took a step back from his longtime band Bright Eyes to release a self-titled solo album. Oberst has always been an ambitious and restless soul, and Bright Eyes has a bit of a revolving-door policy with both members and musical styles, but nonetheless it seemed momentous for Oberst to shed the name, as well as his label Saddle Creek for a solo outing on Merge. That record, it turned out, was a joy, one of the least self-conscious recordings from the sometimes painfully confessional pop star, and his group, dubbed the Mystic Valley Band for the subsequent tour, were loose and heartfelt players, with a swirling, organ-led sound that was decidedly less precious and more rocking than anything Oberst had previously explored.

Yet somehow it is more surprising that the band is back so soon with a new album, again on Merge, a scant ten months since the first, and this time credited not just to Conor Oberst, but instead Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band. That moniker is not just in name, as Outer South is far from another solo effort, and instead seems to be the most collaborative record Oberst had been involved in to date, with nearly half of its 16 tracks written and sung by other members of the group. It follows the same basic formula as the last one -- acoustics strumming, Hammond pumping, twisting lead guitars and Jason Boesel's fluid drumming -- and the songs are all comfortable in that dusty Americana template, but with a variety of singers and songwriters, it has quite a different sound. I'll leave it to the fans to decide if they are happy that Oberst is letting the boys off the leash, but one thing is clear, these guys are all having a blast, and there are at least a few great new songs from Omaha's favorite son, including "To All the Lights in the Windows" and "I Got the Reason," which was a standout at the band's Other Music in-store last August.

- Josh Maddell (May 7, 2009)