Though technically, they are a product of 2019, Better Oblivion Community Center, the collaborative project of Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes and California singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers emerged into the world fully formed, coming forth from the proverbial womb of Los Angeles with an eponymous 12” LP in hand, etched with ten of the year’s finest indie rock songs. The queue for the band’s Providence stop stretched, despite cold and rain, along Broadway in the city’s Federal Hill neighborhood, from a cluster of devoted fans huddled under the theatre’s marquee, down past apartments, cafes, medical buildings, and more.
Better Oblivion comes as one of the latest in a trend of high-profile collaborations among Indie folk royalty. Bridgers, who has shot to stardom since the release of her exemplary 2017 debut Stranger in the Alps, joined fellow songwriters Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker to form Boygenius in 2018, and Oberst, perhaps best known for his work in Bright Eyes, hasn’t shied away from super groups like Monsters of Folk.
The Columbus, an ornately decorated theatre that has lived several radically different lives in the heart of Providence over the past few decades, is a fitting choice for the band’s sound, able to accommodate the gentlest moments. Even the quietest sounds carrying to the back of the room unimpeded, and the high ceilings providing ample space for the noisy crescendos that find their home in the band’s tracks. The band brought their own backdrop for the stage, a blue and red depiction of the titular Community Center, its front stenciled with the proclamation, “IT WILL END IN TEARS”. Oberst and Bridgers stood front and center, sharing both the spotlight a quietly intense interplay that developed throughout the show.
Remarking on the seated nature of the venue, the dual lead singers produced from backstage a pair of beach chairs, from which they sang ‘Exception to the Rule’, and their crew, from a trapdoor beneath the old theatre stage, tossed out a trio of beach balls which spent the rest of the song bouncing around above the crowd. After that, the band performed a cover of The Replacements’ ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’, a rowdy number that saw a few fans emerge from their seats and crowd the aisles closest to the stage, with one denim-clad young concert-goer urging everyone to stand up at the conclusion of the song, which they happily obliged. Ironically, this segued into the quietest song of the set and the BOCC record, ‘Chesapeake’, which references the same rock pioneers they had just covered in a quiet, heartfelt moment that played across the audience’s now-elevated faces in muted red light.
Lit by four freestanding light bulbs that create a moody onstage atmosphere. The band, featuring drummer Marshall Vore, bassist Emily Retsas, and multi-instrumentalist Christian Lee Hutson (the latter of whom also opened the night with a set of heartbreaking acoustic songs), gets more animated than one might imagine having heard the record, the collaboration evidently having conjured all parties’ inner rockers. Every electric passage is wild and loud, Bridgers’ and Oberst’s guitars bristling with fuzzy energy; Oberst mounted Vore’s drum kit often and started songs with a jumping dismount from that zenith, and Bridgers and Hutson at one point both knelt on the floor, inches from each other, wringing the final instrumental passages of a song from their guitars. When she and Oberst form their vocal harmonies, Bridgers’ eyes often turn slightly upwards to the ceiling, perhaps angling towards the source of those ethereal sounds.
Throughout the night, the band added to their ten-track oeuvre with some inverted covers, Oberst singing tracks from Bridgers’ album, including a particularly electric and spirited version of ‘Scott Street’, and vice versa, with Bridgers covering Bright Eyes tracks like ‘Lime Tree’ and ‘Bad Blood’. It’s emblematic of a friendly relationship where each member is invited to put their own spin on the other’s work and nothing is off limits. During ‘Scott Street’, Oberst, who had just emerged from the encore break, sporting a bright red hoodie, took a page from noted venue free-climber Matt Berninger, stepping out onto the house organ and moving along until he found himself perched on the red felt trim of one of the box seats. Before circling back and passing the microphone into the audience, allowing some eager fans to sing the last lines of the song.
There’s something to be said for the nature of collaboration in music like this – it’s a comforting feeling that one can see on the faces of the audience, to know that some of their musical heroes are, in fact, all out there between tours, hanging out, sharing each other’s company, and freely creating new music, allowing a fluid interplay between the new and the old, the quiet and the loud. The final, somber refrain of ‘Dominos’ ends the night as the band waves gratefully and disappears, off to their next gig, and, one can only hope, further rewarding collaboration.
Review and photos by Collin Heroux
