Ever since Bright Eyes released Cassadaga in 2007, Oberst has shown significant interest in spirituality.
It shouldn’t be terribly surprising then that Conor Oberst has titled his new album after the nickname for a mountain worshiped by esoteric New Agers. If you Google Pic de Bugarach, however, you’ll find that others have come up with far more scientifically dubious (but more interesting!) explanations involving aliens, spaceships, and the apocalypse. It’s a bit of a geological anomaly because rock samples taken from its peak have actually proven to be older than samples taken from lower elevations, earning it the nickname “Upside Down Mountain.” Geologists have come up with a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, involving “thrust faults” and “horizontal compression,” which I can only vaguely pretend to understand. There’s a mountain in southern France called the Pic de Bugarach.
