a b Walker-Smart, Sam (January 24, 2019). "Better Oblivion Community Center - Better Oblivion Community Center". Clash . Retrieved January 24, 2019.

Alright. We can leave that in, I guess we answered it... So let’s get to when you two met. It was a show at the Bootleg in LA, and Conor you were playing a secret show and Phoebe, your friend at the venue got you to open for them. This was July 2016, so before Stranger In The Alps was out, and Conor, you were there early enough to watch her set. And afterwards you asked her to send you her record. You must’ve really been impressed with her set. Conor Oberst – vocals (1–10), guitar (1, 2, 4, 7–9), baritone guitar (3), piano (4, 10), keyboards (5), Whirly tube (7); production, photography Colburn, Randall (January 24, 2019). "Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers just dropped an album as Better Oblivion Community Center". The A.V. Club . Retrieved January 24, 2019. The album had an elaborate rollout featuring cryptic brochures and a telephone hotline. [6] They performed "Dylan Thomas" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on January 23, 2019. [7] The album was released the next day.Ultratop.be – Better Oblivion Community Center – Better Oblivion Community Center" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved March 2, 2019. Hall, Michael James (January 28, 2019). "Better Oblivion Community Center: Better Oblivion Community Center (Dead Oceans) Review". Under the Radar . Retrieved January 30, 2019. So then you guys would guest at each others shows, right? And Conor, you were spending a lot of time in Los Angeles around this time. Cuz you’ve been in Omaha mostly the past few years but you have a spot in LA, on the West Side.

Snapes, Laura (January 25, 2019). "Better Oblivion Community Center: Better Oblivion Community Center review – indie power combo". The Guardian . Retrieved January 25, 2019.

Releases

Manno, Lizzie (January 24, 2019). "Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst Surprise-Drop New Collaboration Album, Better Oblivion Community Center". Paste. Archived from the original on April 20, 2019 . Retrieved January 24, 2019. Ah, okay. But you wrote them together. It’s not like Conor would have a song and send it to you, or you would have a song and he would just add bits to it. These songs you guys sat down and wrote together. In the same room? Right, yeah. That’s true, “gravity” is a perfect word for it. And you know, I say ‘in unison’, it’s from the Latin. It means, literally, ‘one sound’ but when you guys sing together it’s really not, it’s incredibly rich because you get both these different emotions from the exact same lyrics. The sort of clear eyed optimistic sound of Phoebe’s vocal and then the more seasoned sound of Conor’s. Yeah! Burmese. Right?And then you tagged your location but later on you typed those characters into Google Translate and it turned out not to be tagged from “Forest Lawn”. It actually translated as “Better Oblivion Community Center”. Is that right? Finn, Rachel (January 24, 2019). "Better Oblivion Community Center - Better Oblivion Community Center". DIY . Retrieved January 24, 2019.

The first song you wrote together is the first song on the album, “I Didn’t Know What I Was In For” and at that time you weren’t really thinking it would be a whole album but you knew you wanted it to be its own thing, not a Phoebe Bridgers & Conor Oberst album of acoustic songs? He wasn’t kidding. After some trying years, Oberst’s recent work has been a vessel for stark, existential unburdening. On 2016’s Ruminations and its 2017 companion Salutations, he funneled first-person accounts of grief, depression, insomnia, paranoia, court appearances, and hospital visits into his most vivid and unsettled music in years. Drawing a direct line to the shaky downer anthems that made Bright Eyes an influence for so many young artists—Bridgers included—these newer songs sounded exhaustive and raw, like there was a punchline at the very bottom of all his anxieties and he’d dig through them like a pile of dirty laundry to uncover it. Right, and so you guys would show up and guest at shows. And you’re on Phoebe’s song “Would You Rather”. So really early on you started collaborating on music, right? That was kind of an immediate spark, this instinct to perform and sing together. And your voices, they really compliment one another. There’s something really special about when you duet. Particularly when you sing in unison, it really works. Phoebe, you have a really sweet, crystal clear voice and Conor, yours is more world weary and raspy, so there’s something really striking about them together. I wanted to talk about “Dylan Thomas” cuz that’s the first single, right? It’s the first single and the last song you wrote for the album. There’s a lot of death and ghosts on the album, and mentions of illness and feeling unwell and being anxious - and those are things you’ve both written about a lot - which is partly why this collaboration works so well. Dylan Thomas, we all know, is the esteemed Welsh poet who died in 1953 at the age of 39. He’s mentioned for ‘dying on the barroom floor’ and you know, he was definitely a big drinker. He was drinking at the White Horse in the West Village every night he was in New York before he died. And he fell into a coma at the Chelsea Hotel and died soon after at Saint Vincent’s on 8th Avenue. Did you know that he actually died of emphysema, pneumonia and bronchitis? And that in November 1953, the month he died, over 200 people died in New York City from air pollution? He probably died from smog. For Bridgers, this was essentially square one. Her songs, hushed and patient, often seek in-the-moment honesty over retrospective wisdom. She’s equally adept at capturing an omnipresent fog of melancholy and the cosmic joke looming just outside our periphery. Her debut was filled with odes to friends who died too young and woeful retellings of her stoned, late-night regrets, all sung with a lightness that made her worldview seem both chaotic and consoling. Late in the album, she invited Oberst to sing on a ballad called “Would You Rather.” Voicing the troubled family member who helped make Bridgers’ childhood survivable, he echoed her fluttering whisper in a low, empathetic wheeze: “I’m a can on a string/You’re on the end.”DeVille, Chris (January 24, 2019). "Conor Oberst & Phoebe Bridgers Release Surprise Album As Better Oblivion Community Center". Stereogum . Retrieved January 24, 2019. Trendell, Andrew (January 27, 2019). "Phoebe Bridgers & Conor Oberst – 'Better Oblivion Community Center' review". NME . Retrieved January 27, 2019. Official Independent Albums Chart Top 50 - 1 March 2019". Official Charts Company . Retrieved 15 April 2022.