Conor Oberst wants to grow up.

Granted, the indie impresario has always been precocious. Releasing full-length albums barely into his teens, an icon for wayward teenage lovers before he could legally drink, hailed as the “New Dylan” by the age of 23–Oberst, under the guise of his Bright Eyes moniker, has always seemed accomplished far beyond his years. The record label he started with his brother in high school, Saddle Creek, is one of the largest and most influential indie labels in business today, and he has gone on to form another successful vanity label, Team Love. An indie rock magnate who happens to have been embraced by both his own generation and older rockers yearning for the deliverance of a new genius, Conor Oberst has accomplished more at the age of 28 than most punk kids will in their entire lives. He may be the U.S. Army of emo.

But no matter how preternaturally mature Oberst might seem, his songwriting sensibility often seems perpetually prepubescent. Sure, there are plenty of the accoutrements of artistic maturity in Oberst’s work– singing with the incomparable Emmylou Harris on I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, flirting with orchestral arrangements on Cassadaga. But for all the artistry of those albums, there’s been a disingenuous subtext. Tellingly, despite all the plaudits for Oberst’s refined work in Bright Eyes, he seemed the most comfortable in his skin during his 2002 Desaparecidos side-project, in which he indulged his dormant punk rock chops.

Though Bright Eyes albums such as Lifted … or I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning stand as testaments to Oberst’s artistic development, the songwriting has always tripped upon its own preciousness. What’s precocious at 19 can be off-putting at 30, and it’s likely that no one is more aware of this than Oberst himself.

I Want To Believe

So what is an icon, already anointed a legend at the relatively young age of 28, to do? Burdened by the weight of past successes, feeling the need to make a personal, adult statement, Oberst did the unexpected: he followed the flying saucers to Tepoztl