Conor Oberst

Bright Eyes’ mainman bows down to If You’re Feeling Sinister by Belle And Sebastian (Jeepster, 1996).

I was 16 in 1996, playing in a band that never really got off the ground. I don’t think we even had a name. It was all loud, screaming, distorted guitars – we were listening to Midwest, hard, emo punk shit.

One day a friend of mine, Aaron Druery, a really sick guitar player, showed up with this CD and said, “I think you’ll like this.” In my parents’ house we had a room, the hangout room, that had a stereo. That’s where I first put it on, and I just fell in love with it. I’m not really a big fan of the ‘T’ word (ie, ‘twee’) but there’s like a delicate-ness that’s kind of on its own. I think that Stuart [Murdoch] has that rare gift, like Randy Newman, where he can write a song that’s simultaneously terribly sad and also funny, and then there are others that are just kind of straight, like The Fox In The Snow, which is such a beautiful song. They were mysterious too – they’re like, recreating The Last Supper or something in the inside sleeve and there’s just so many of them, and because there wasn’t the internet then, I remember thinking, Which one’s the singer? There was an element of novelty too – I wasn’t completely familiar with these very Scottish and English terms. Now, I think it feels timeless and self-contained, and because it wasn’t following any trend of the time, it still sounds fresh.

It was a big influence on Bright Eyes, in the sense of its ‘more is more’ ethos. There’s a lot of things happening but there’s a home-made feeling to it. That’s something that we embraced, that it doesn’t just have to be bass, drums and guitars all the time.

I became a big fan and over the years have opened for them many times. I would not have guessed that, listening to this record at 16. It is kind of incredible.

As told to Ian Harrison Bright Eyes release expanded ‘Companion’ Editions of their first three LPs on Dead Oceans on May 27.