Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst on collaborations, cathartic screams and moving forward

"I didn't know what I was in for, when I signed up for that run, there's no way I'm curing cancer but I'll sweat it out," sing Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst on Didn't Know What I was in For, the first track from their debut album Better Oblivion Community Center. It's an image that is both hopeless, but also one that ends oddly optimistically: "I feel so proud now for all the good I've done."

Better Oblivion Community Center is also the band name for the songwriting pair, who first met when Bridgers, an up and comer, opened in 2016 for Oberst, an artist who has been releasing music since 1993 both solo and with acclaimed groups like Bright Eyes and Monsters of Folk.

Oberst was so struck by Bridgers' performance that he ended up contributing vocals to her acclaimed 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps. Bridgers then released an album with the indie-rock supergroup boygenius (consisting of Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus) in 2018, but in that same year she was secretly working with Oberst on BOCC. It's an album that capitalizes on the duo's respective strengths as musicians, offering both plaintive ballads and more rock-oriented songs influenced by acts like Brian Eno and the Replacements, all seeming to reflect on life, death and self-care, as well as how we find purpose in the little things.

Below, we spoke to Bridgers and Oberst over the phone from Los Angeles about collaboration, the cathartic power of emo screams and moving forward from that New York Times investigation. The following is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.

Conor, you've collaborated with many different people in your 25-plus-year career, and Phoebe, in a relatively short time, you've already collaborated with so many people. I wonder what you both see in working with so many different people as opposed to just kind of settling into one groove?

Conor Oberst: I always think of it as a learning opportunity. When you get a chance to see how another person approaches the process of making an album or doing a show, especially when it's someone you really respect and admire, it's a cool peek behind the curtain to see the way they approach the same stuff that you do. And yeah, I think in the best collaboration, whoever is involved walks away learning something new and, you know, maybe pushing the other person into trying stuff that they wouldn't on their own. I think that's just kind of the nature of collaboration, or at least when they work out, you know, the good ones.  

Phoebe Bridgers: Yeah, I mean I have a tendency to procrastinate and when you're surrounded by people who are working on the same thing, like if I'm with with a bunch of people, I won't look at my phone for 45 minutes — I'll write something or play something. So I think part of it comes from that, my weird avoidance, but also in the best collaboration, it feels like like half the work and twice the reward.

I know you guys first met in 2016. And Conor, you sang on one of Phoebe's songs [Would you Rather] before, but for this album, what was the dynamic in the songwriting room?

Oberst: Well, we did it pretty old fashioned. We just sat around with guitars and notebooks and all the songs were written together. You know, obviously one person might have a chord progression or a little lyrical idea or some kind of concept but, pretty much all the songs were done together in a room. We didn't really exchange a bunch of demos or anything like that. ... It's been funny answering people's questions about who wrote what, because honestly, I can't even remember on some of the lines who came up with what, you know? So that's probably a good sign.  

I wanted to ask specifically about the song My City, there's this prolonged, climactic vocal note at the end. How did it come about?

Oberst: When we were making the record that was one of my goals, 'cause I heard Phoebe scream, you know like f--king around playing, but I hadn't really heard her do it on a recording. I think she's got a great scream so that was one of my goals, was to get her screaming on the record. And so it worked out. That's a good scream, and then the end of Big Black Heart, we kind of scream at the end of that line. We've got a couple of good emo screams.

Does it feel cathartic to get it out?

Bridgers: It does, it's funny because I always want to save my voice and in rehearsal I'm like, I'm just going to whisper this one and then sometimes we'll get to it and I'm, well what if I feel like it? Which is so not smart. My voice is already kind of f--ked up from being on tour and travelling and then landing and immediately going into rehearsals, like I should not be singing. But yeah it's really fun to sing.

He wanted me to scream and I wanted him to sing harmony- Phoebe Bridgers

One thing I really like is your harmonies because they go back and forth between you guys, you each harmonize for each other as opposed to only one person. How did you determine where that would happen and how?

Bridgers: Well, Conor had never sung harmony before.  

Oberst: I'm a terrible harmony singer.

Bridgers: So that was my goal. He wanted me to scream and I wanted him to sing harmony, so I just kind of picked some that I thought it would be compelling to have me singing the melody and Conor singing the harmony and then I would go in and record a harmony and he would copy my recording.

Oberst: She's got a great sense of how to arrange vocal parts in interesting ways. Obviously, when you're coming up with harmonies there's sort of a paint by numbers way a lot of people do it, but I think that's one of Phoebe's strong suits. She manages to find notes that are still really pretty and nice but maybe not the first one people would think of, you know, which I appreciate.

The album seems to be optimistic but it also feels a bit hopeless at the same time. I find it very soothing. It's not like, hey, everything's going to be OK, it's more like, hey, deal with it.

Oberst: Yeah. You know, we're all in it together ... whatever this is, whatever is happening.

I have to ask, given everything that's come out with this New York Times story [in which Bridgers is quoted], was any of this on your mind when recording the album, which really seems to be about fighting against the odds and trying to be your best?

Bridgers: No. It's obviously, I've been reliving a lot of it but this is kind of ancient history to me.… I was already so far ahead of it by the time we recorded this. Also, the boygenius project was really revitalizing to me and I recorded both albums in the same months. I felt like it was totally irrelevant to [Better Oblivion Community Center].… I feel like a completely different person. Both of these bands have just kind of fuelled me and it's like, you know, it's a world away so it didn't cross my mind during the recording.

Conor, as someone who has been in the industry for quite a while — you have a label, you mentor artists, you yourself came up while being mentored by older artists —  I wonder if you had any thoughts on how on this all reflects on the industry?

Oberst: You know, I'm just really proud of Phoebe for what she did and I am very supportive of her.… It's about time a lot of these issues came to the forefront. I think the world has to kind of recalibrate to new times. And I think people that are consistently abusive to people need to be called out and that's what happened.

Better Oblivion Community Center also includes contributions from Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Carla Azar (Autolux, Jack White), Christian Lee Hutson and Anna Butterss, as well as Dawes' Wylie Gelber and Griffin Goldsmith. It is available now.