Its a meaningful way to connect with the past that doesnt feel totally nostalgic and self-indulgent, says Conor Oberst of the forthcoming Bright Eyes reissue project. We are taking these songs and making them interesting to us all over again. I like that. I like a challenge. I like to be forced to do something thats slightly hard, just to see if we can. Just to see if we can could be the unofficial motto of Bright Eyes, the band Oberst founded as a teenager and plays in with two of his oldest friends, multi-instrumentalists Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. Weve never made the same record twice, the singer says. Im proud of that. From warm folk-rock to austere electro, plaintive, earnest ballads to glacially cool guitar noise, Bright Eyes has tried on pretty much every sound thats ever inspired them, just to see if they could. Along the way theyve collaborated with many of their influences, heroes, and peers, from Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris to Jenny Lewis, Nick Zinner and Britt Daniel. And theyve seen their songs covered by many more, including Lorde, The Killers, and Mac Miller. For a band thats often been perceived as an outlier the ingenious but quixotic group fronted by that wunderkind singer-songwriter with the floppy hair and bedroom eyes – the depth, breadth, and impact of the Bright Eyes canon is remarkable. And thats what really strikes you when you sit down to fully take in the nine Bright Eyes albums that will be reissued, in chronological order, in groups of three, beginning this spring. Over the last two-plus decades, as Bright Eyes has released one after another time capsule LPs urgent dispatches from transcendent, fleeting eras of our collective lives theyve also simultaneously been assembling a robust, mature, narratively cohesive discography. Ive written a looooot of songs, Oberst says, laughing. And by no means are they all good, but the fact that we can cull through these records and find ones that Im not ashamed to sing years later makes me feel pretty happy. Its the desire to celebrate that sonic bounty that first got Oberst and the band excited about the idea of comprehensive reissues. But this wouldnt be a Bright Eyes project if a moment devoted to appreciating the past werent turned into an opportunity to connect with the future. Thats where the nine companion EPs come in. Or as Oberst puts it, the supplemental reading for the primary reissues: One six-track EP per reissued album, each featuring five reworked songs from that album. My thing was they had to sound different from the originals, we had to mess with them in a substantial way. Plus one cover that felt of the era in which that particular albums was made a song that meant something to the band at the time. To help the EPs come alive in the fullest way, Bright Eyes called in lots of old friends, like Bridgers, M. Ward, and Welch and Rawlings, as well as new ones like Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee. It was the bands way of reframing, rediscovering, and renewing the past. It was also a hilarious amount of work. I thought it was a cool concept, Oberst says. Then I realized its nine records, six songs a piece, so thats like 54 different songs you have to record! He laughs. But if theres a mantra more central to the Bright Eyes ethos as trying something new just to see if you can get away with it, its signing up for way more than you can handle just to see if you can make it work. We always bite off more than we can chew, Oberst summarizes. It keeps things interesting.

Format / LP
Released /11/11/2022
Catalogue /DOC-2871C1
Barcode /656605158730
Artist /Bright Eyes
Label /Dead Oceans
Genre / Christmas