What happened to Conor Oberst?

I've been reading a lot of year-end music lists this week and almost none (actually, none) of them include the Bright Eyes frontman's record. Was it really that bad? I admit, I'm biased -- Bright Eyes has too much to do with my "formative years" to be objective -- but I liked it. Especially "Lenders in the Temple." I'd put that song in a top 50 of 2008 list. Probably even toward the top.

In a year of over-production and hyper-stylized dance music, we didn't have enough well-worded songs. Maybe the darkness of Bon Iver took up too much room for other lyrically focused artists. That was a really large record. Or maybe Bright Eyes and Oberst fans wanted him to be equally as dark, which this record wasn't at all. But that's not really fair. We can't expect our artists to suffer needlessly for their art, can we? I mean, if the guy wants to be happy and healthy and that's how his music comes out, then we can't really fault him for that. I still think he's better with words than 99 percent of songwriters out there.

UPDATE: This useless magazine has "Moab" at 31, right after "Pork and Beans" by Weezer, and before "Everyone Nose" by N.E.R.D. He's in more trouble than I thought.