Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band: Conor Oberst : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

On last year's Cassadaga, Conor Oberst left his home in New York to wander the country's byways. On his latest album, recorded in Mexico, the Omaha, Nebraska, native is still drifting, having ditched both his Bright Eyes moniker and longtime producer Mike Mogis. A rough-hewn, death-haunted travelogue, this set proves that while you can run from home, you can't run from yourself. And sometimes that's OK. Largely, this is the introspective folk rock of Bright Eyes, though there's some welcome shift away from autobiography: "Danny Callahan" is about a doomed child, and "I Don't Want to Die (In the Hospital)" is a piano-driven rave-up whose narrator could be Oberst's grandfather. The sketchbook Americana is framed by two lean acoustic tracks: "Cape Canaveral" is a vivid postcard that begins with knuckles knocking on a guitar; "Milk Thistle" pays tribute to an herbal cirrhosis treatment. But the keeper is "Moab," a runaway's anthem that insists "there's nothing that the road cannot heal." Even with gas at more than four bucks a gallon, Oberst makes the myth as seductive as ever.