Conor Oberst's intimate, mostly acoustic set last night at the Fitzgerald Theater was quite a serious and powerful affair, as should come across loud and clear in the full review. There were some lighter, funny comments made between songs, though.
While introducing "Lenders in the Temple," the good Omaha kid brought up the new evidence exposed this week about Jesus possibly having a wife. "That makes me a lot more comfortable about my upbringing," he quipped. And when he got to the second of two new/unreleased songs later in the show -- a light and sweet track he said he wrote for an unnamed movie that his Bright Eyes mates are also scoring -- he admitted it was a "sentimental" one. "It might be a good time to go to the bathroom if you have a cold, [expletive] black heart," he said.
As he often does, Oberst also paid tribute to his old running buddy Bill Sullivan, co-proprietor of the 400 Bar, who was Bright Eyes' tour manager for many years and co-produced Thursday's show: "He took my band all around the country when we never had any right to be on tour," Oberst said before the old nugget "An Attempt to Tip the Scales" at the start of the encore. Here's the entire set list:
The Big Picture / Arienette / First Day of My Life / Common Knowledge / Lenders in the Temple / Classic Cars / Amy in the White Coat / Cape Canaveral / At the Bottom of Everything / Ladder Song / unreleased song "about American royalty" / new song from unnamed movie / Ten Women / Shell Games / Map of the World / Laura Laurent / Breezy ENCORE: An Attempt to Tip the Scales / Milk Thistle
