Desaparecidos: Read Music/Speak Spanish : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In his other band, the desperately sincere Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst murmurs sleepy plaints that include, "Oh, you are the roots that sleep beneath my feet and hold the earth in place" atop a low-fi shimmer. Desaparecidos are a different story altogether: "Got a letter from the army/So I think that I'll enlist," Oberst declares on the acidic "The Happiest Place on Earth," as muted feedback twists into dissonant swirls. "No, I'm not brave or proud of nothing/I just want to kill something."

Must be trouble in the heartland indeed for this indie-rock wimp prince to lash out so bitterly and unleash so much heavy guitar. With Read Music, Oberst coats an anthemic thrash cribbed from Pinkerton-period Weezer in glistening guitar sludge and rasps indignantly about the degeneration of his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, into a strip mall with an area code. Oberst etches the relentless corporate erosion of bohemia in sharp detail -- bad enough when your favorite hangouts are plowed over, but what if a stingy, winner-takes-all attitude seeps into the love-true-love you thought was your refuge too? "If you're feeling trapped," Oberst croaks to his lover, "remember, we wanted that." Whether his laments are personal, political or wedged somewhere in between, Oberst sings with the fiery righteousness of a young idealist suddenly discovering that things can always get worse.

KEITH HARRIS
(RS 895 - May 9, 2002)