Following the release of their surprise folk-pop project Better Oblivion Community Center this week, Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers staged a three-song performance on Saturday’s CBS This Morning.
Oberst, Bridgers and their band played a charming mini-concert of melodic tracks from their self-titled album including “Dylan Thomas,” “Didn’t Know What I Was in For” and “My City.”
“I just didn’t want anyone to hear that we had a project, and know both of our music and make an assumption about what it sounded like,” Bridgers revealed in an accompanying interview of their decision to keep the band a secret. Oberst added that they wanted to “avoid a duets album” and anything “too tender and folky.”
Bridgers and Oberst began writing songs together at the beginning of spring of 2017, prior to the release of Bridgers’ debut album Stranger in The Alps. While Better Oblivion Community Center was “kind of an accident,” it seems like it was just Oberst needed.
“It had been a long time since I’ve felt that sense of, ‘Wow, I really like music still, and everything doesn’t have to be a super-solitary, painful exercise.’ The whole experience was just what the doctor ordered for me to get excited about music again,” Oberst previously told Rolling Stone.