Conor Oberst Ruminations

This past winter, Conor Oberst found himself hibernating in his hometown of Omaha after living in New York City for more than a decade. He emerged with the unexpectedly raw, unadorned solo album Ruminations, available October 14, 2016, on Nonesuch Records. "I wasn't expecting to write a record," says Oberst. "I honestly wasn't expecting to do much of anything. Winter in Omaha can have a paralyzing effect on a person but in this case it worked in my favor. I was just staying up late every night playing piano and watching the snow pile up outside the window. Next thing I knew I had burned through all the firewood in the garage and had more than enough songs for a record. I recorded them quick to get them down but then it just felt right to leave them alone." Ruminations is available to pre-order now from iTunes and from Nonesuch Store, where a limited number of pre-orders will include a signed print. (The prints have now sold out.)

Oberst began publicly releasing music in 1994 at the age of 14. Those early recordings, made in Omaha on four-track cassette by Oberst and his friends, were an introduction to the work of a prodigious songwriter whose creative outpouring would soon be widely lauded. Writing and recording prolifically over the next two decades, first with his band Bright Eyes and later under his own name—and at special moments as a member of Desaparecidos and Monsters of Folk—Oberst became known, as the Los Angeles Times said, an artist who "sees the world with fresh and fearless eyes." The Times continued, "He weaves his findings into intimate songs whose melodies are as timeless as a hymnal and whose images are hauntingly poetic....He can command your attention with long narratives that have more words than a pocket dictionary, or stop you cold with a single line."

In Nebraska last winter, songs that harked back to that earlier era unexpectedly began to take shape. Oberst went to ARC, the studio he built with his Bright Eyes bandmate and longtime friend Mike Mogis, to record that music. With the help of engineer Ben Brodin, he recorded all the songs in the span of 48 hours. The results are almost sketch-like in their sparseness, and they ultimately became the songs that comprise Ruminations. These tracks do not have the multi-layered instrumentation of the most recent Bright Eyes and solo albums: This is Oberst alone with his guitar, piano, and harmonica; the songs connect with some of the rough magic and anxious poetry that first brought him to the attention of the world, while their lyrical complexity and concerns make it obvious they could only have been written in the present.

01 Tachycardia
02 Barbary Coast (later)
03 Gossamer Thin
04 Counting Sheep
05 Mamah Borthwick (A Sketch)
06 The Rain Follows the Plow
07 A Little Uncanny
08 Next of Kin
09 You All Loved Him Once
10 Till St. Dymphna Kicks Us Out

Conor will perform Rumination live for NPR at 8 p.m. ET on Friday, Oct. 14. EST, and it will be broadcasted for everybody as follows:

When Conor Oberst started releasing music more than 20 years ago, first as a solo artist and later as Bright Eyes, he was just a teenager from Nebraska. Everyone marveled at how a kid could write and record at such a breathlessly prolific pace, producing inspired, sonically adventurous songs with a wisdom and world view beyond his years. Now just in his mid-30s, he's already a veteran, with dozens of albums and EPs behind him. Oberst returns this fall with one of the most intimate records of his impressive catalog. Ruminations is a spare, all-acoustic collection of meditations on politics, religion, relationships and where he finds himself in an ever-evolving and complicated world.

We'll feature Ruminations in our First Listen series starting this Friday, Sept. 30. But to celebrate the release, Conor Oberst will also perform Ruminations in a special First Listen Live from the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in SoHo, New York, at 8 p.m. ET on Friday, Oct. 14. WFUV's Rita Houston and NPR Music's Bob Boilen will host.

If you'll be in the New York City area and would like to attend this taping, we'll be giving away an extremely limited number of free tickets to the show. To score a pair of tickets, email us (starting now!) at nprmusicevents@gmail.com with (1) your full name and (2) a contact phone number. The contest will close on Monday, Oct. 10 and winners will be notified by Wednesday, Oct. 12.

Please note that the show will be all ages. If you're not in NYC or don't win tickets to the show, make sure to watch the show live on NPR Music's Facebook page on October 14th at 8 p.m. EST.