My Top 1000 Songs #923: Another Travelin' Song

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

I've got mixed feelings on Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes. On the plus side, there are a handful of songs I think are just great, a colorful mix of freak folk and experimental indie rock, passionate and emotionally rich yet still melodic. On the other hand, I often feel like he's directly addressing a younger, sadder, needier audience that I'm just not a part of. And that's fine, there's just enough in his catalog for me to build a pretty solid mix.

As someone less drawn to the mopey stuff, I naturally gravitate towards "Another Travelin' Song" (off 2005's solid I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning). It's relatively upbeat, a country road-trip rocker that swaddles Oberst's desperation in perky good cheer, the lyrics surprisingly funny, hyper-specific yet broad enough to hit home. "I will kick and scream or kneel and plead, I'll fight like hell to hide that I've given up" is sheer genius, leaving the song behind on an enthusiastically exhausted note.

Live 2014: