By the time Omahas Conor Oberst first gained widespread attention in the wake of his breakthrough 2002 Bright Eyes album, Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, the then 22-year-old singer-songwriter had already been making records for nearly a decade. He self-released his debut cassette, 1993s Water, when he was 13, and hes been one of the most prolific artists of his generation ever since. And although Bright Eyes has long been the best known (and most celebrated) vehicle for his songs, hes fronted and worked with numerous different bands and lineups throughout his career, ostensibly just to keep up with his own free-roaming muse. In 2005, when Bright Eyes simultaneously released two very different albums (the folksy Im Wide Awake, Its Morning and the more experimental, electronic-based Digital Ash in a Digital Urn), it seemed Oberst had finally settled on the Bright Eyes name for good, no matter what style he felt like playing. But apparently that was misleading; although he issued another Bright Eyes album, Casadega, in 2007, the recent introduction of his latest handle Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band suggests that the artist once dubbed rocks boy genius remains as mercurial and full of surprises as ever, even at the ripe old age of 28.