My Top 1000 Songs #985: From A Balance Beam

[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.]

As noted before, I'm kinda mixed on Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes. A little hit and miss. But this one hits, and hits hard. "From A Balance Beam," off 2002's Lifted, is fully-realized musically, and Oberst's enthusiastic angst is surprisingly compelling, a powerfully engaging, almost cinematic narrative that picks me up and takes me along for a ride. "It was in a foreign hotel bathtub, I baptized myself in change. And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been." Been there, buddy.

Live 2011:

Live in the studio (at 3:33):