King Of Indie Rock

Twenty-four-year-old Conor Oberst pulls the overlong sleeve of his brown striped sweater over one hand and musses his greasy dark hair with the other. “The first sentence of all my reviews has always been how old I was,” the Bright Eyes frontman noted to Mark Binelli of Rolling Stone magazine with an angular smile. His hair, now piled forward in a jagged New Wave pompadour, conjures the phrase “A-ha tribute band.” “On tour, people would always tell me, ‘You’re gonna be really great someday,’ ” Oberst continues. “How many times have I heard that?” He chuckles and fingers his pack of Parliament Lights. “Of course, most people don’t have their entire development as a songwriter documented. Most people have years of sh** nobody ever hears. It’s probably better that way.”

The full story at rollingstone.com has since been removed/relocated.