Sincere Songs and a 13-Piece Band to Salve a Troubled Mind

Some people sing because they want to; other people sing because they have to. Indie-pop wunderkind Conor Oberst falls into the latter group. Performing with his musical collective Bright Eyes on Thursday at the Henry Fonda Theatre, the Omaha singer-guitarist offered songs that were reassuring salves for his troubled young mind, plagued chiefly by a desire for true love but also by personal history, current events and artistic integrity.

On this first of two scheduled consecutive nights, Oberst, 22, and his 13-piece band drew their 90-minute set mostly from Bright Eyes’ recent album, “Lifted, or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground.” A prolific songwriter, Oberst already has six previous Bright Eyes releases on rising-star indie label Saddle Creek Records, as well as a collection by his more rock-oriented band Desaparecidos.

Played by three percussionists plus musicians on guitars, pedal steel, strings, keyboards, brass, woodwinds, vibraphone and more, the complex, intriguing but sometimes overly lugubrious tunes from “Lifted” came to, by turns, vibrant, desperate, joyous and soulful life. It was orchestral pop with a rambling, shambling feel, blending dusty country waltzes, ‘60s folkie idealism and post-punk eccentricity into a simple, elegant tapestry of emotional need and release.

Comparisons to Bob Dylan are perhaps inevitable, but you don’t get the sense that Dylan needs anything other than himself. Oberst, on the other hand, can be sarcastic and despairing, but he celebrates his love for singing and for his friends because they keep his self-inflicted demons at bay.

He told coherent stories with a wordy, unstructured poetry that was quite emotionally literal. Yet the sincerity generally stopped short of being painful. His wavering voice veered from near-whispered sentiments to explosive, ragged bursts of feeling, but it never sounded like affectation. Indeed, such sweeping songs as “Method Acting” gathered and broke as organically as mini-storms.

The subtle instrumentation was dramatically offset by close-set, propulsive, at times almost militant drumbeats that gave such numbers as “False Advertising” a thunderously urgent counterpoint. Alternately sardonic and sincere, the song expressed Oberst’s Kurt Cobain-esque desire to never let the spotlight obscure his motivation for making music: to save himself and perhaps others.

Although such songs as “Lover I Don’t Have to Love” and “You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will” obsessed over personal romantic foibles, Oberst also displayed an awareness of--and, naturally, concern about--the larger world.

He has said in interviews that events of Sept. 11, 2001, profoundly affected him, and some lyrics reflected anger and frustration with such out-of-his-control things as war and mass-media messages. He even pulled a momentary cheer from the hungrily attentive audience by inserting a passing reference to defending oil wells into the questioning “Don’t Know When but a Day Is Gonna Come.”

The most impressive thing about Oberst was that in an era when it’s all been done before, he had the guts to express himself without being overly self-conscious or nonchalant.

He was unique and yet universal, a young man acknowledging how the world works while wishing things were different, buoyed in the confusing sea of adulthood by the kind of intense love for one’s friends that only youth feels. And he unabashedly offered his views despite knowing just how many tortured musical souls before him have tried to make sense of it all.