Photos: CJ Foeckler
Desaparecidos didn’t seem like the type of band you could return to, let alone one that Conor Oberst wanted to return to. The Omaha punk group released its first album Read Music/Speak Spanish in 2002 then broke up shortly after, as Oberst focused his attention on Bright Eyes and grew ever-mellower with each release. After a stint with Monsters of Folk and a pair of somnambulistic albums with the Mystic Valley Band so hellbent on maturity they sucked any semblance of a pulse from his music, the thought that Oberst might ever again tap into the roiling rage of his youth seemed like a pipe dream. He’d outgrown that, it seemed.
So just the fact that Desaparecidos are touring in 2015 is an improbable victory, especially for fans who never got to see them during their very brief run the first time around. But even more surprising is just how committed they still sound. This summer the group released its second album, Payola, and if it doesn’t quite match the violent conviction of its Bush administration-era predecessor, it comes damn close, as Oberst froths at the mouth over another decade’s worth of political injustice. The ideological outrage that so many of us feel during our college years inevitably cools with age, but Desaparecidos have become a living reminder that it doesn’t have to.
Outfitted in a black shirt and black jeans with long black hair, Oberst looked like he’d been left behind by the Warped Tour as he and his band took the Turner Hall stage Monday night. They looked and played the part of a punk band so perfectly that at times the show almost seemed like a kind of punk burlesque, as Oberst screamed his throat raw, spit on stage and head banged in sync with his equally long-haired bandmates, while the front of the crowd moshed along. Between songs, Oberst periodically expounded on their politics, tying the anti-immigrant crusades of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio to a broader history of racial intolerance in America as he introduced “MariKKKopa” and prefacing “Search the Searches” with a warning to the crowd that the government is tracking their iPhone and monitoring their trips to Costco. To underscore that paranoia, the stage and venue were decked in security cameras, which projected black and white footage of the audience behind the band.
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It was all over the top, and also riotously entertaining—the most alive, most satisfying performance Oberst has given in Milwaukee since Bright Eyes’ 2007 date opening the Cassadaga tour at the Pabst Theater. That infamous show ended with a sloppy encore where the over-served singer fell head first onto his seated string section, and ended with his limp body being dragged off stage by an irritated handler. This show’s finale wasn’t nearly so self-destructive. Instead the band offered a tidy cover of The Clash’s “Spanish Bombs” then Oberst bid the crowd farewell with a friendly, belated stage dive after closing with “Greater Omaha.” After years of watching Oberst amble through no-frills folk songs, that’s a stage dive most fans never dreamed they’d see.
