Conor Oberst & Craig Wedren – “Justice To A Scream”

People have been concerned about Conor Oberst lately. Earlier this fall, Oberst’s band Bright Eyes released their new album Five Dice, All Threes, and just before it came out, the band canceled all their tour dates for the year. The band cited Oberst’s “vocal problems,” but lots of fans worried that the problems were deeper than that, to the point where Oberst needed to share a statement about how he’s doing OK and the band will be back on the road next year. Today, there’s a new Conor Oberst song out, though it seems to be one that he recorded before any recent issues.

Conor Oberst and former Shudder To Think frontman Craig Wedren go way back together. Wedren released his 2005 solo debut Lapland on Oberst’s Team Love label, and they also worked together on Wedren’s 2011 album Wand. These days, Wedren mostly does film music, though he released is own album The Dream Dreaming back in January. We did a We’ve Got A File On You interview with Wedren during that promo run. In that conversation, Wedren mentioned that he and Oberst had just made a new song together:

Actually, my wife just produced this movie called Alok, which is a documentary about a trans performer, activist, philosopher named Alok. And Alok’s favorite artist is Bright Eyes. My assistant, Simón Wilson, and I did the score for the documentary, which is going to Sundance next week. So I had this excuse to call Conor, whom I had not spoken to in years — not for any reason, just because of life — and we just wrote this new song for the documentary. So we reconvened, which was great.

The short documentary Alok still seems to be on the festival circuit, and I can only assume that the end-credits song that Oberst and Wedren recorded together is “Justice To A Scream,” the track that they just released today. It’s a ragged, driving indie rock jam, and it finds cool ways to layer the voices of two of our most distinct indie rock singers. Check it out below.

“Justice To A Scream” is out now on Wedren’s Tough Lover label. Read our We’ve Got A File On You interview with Wedren here.