I'm finding it hard to have nothing to say.
From Fevers and Mirrors (2000)
It’s hard to believe that someone who spends so much time being raw and harsh can write something so beautiful. This song is an unexpected sunrise vista. The story told in the lyrics is supported (and complemented) by a wonderful arrangement of the cornucopia of instruments which has become the style of Bright Eyes.
Notable lyric: but now I’m confused / is this death really you?
From Every Day and Every Night EP (1999)
This song has some vivid imagery. It’s a love song that spends most of the time wallowing in anger and depression. The narrator constantly reiterates his hatred of lovers, that class of people ignorant to the cold emptiness of the real world, remarking that lovers should be drowned and burned. Then, in the last verse, he suddenly changes course, ending the song in remarkable optimism.
Notable lyric: I believe that lovers should be draped in flowers / And laid entwined together on a bed of clovers / Left there to sleep / Left there to dream of their happiness
From Cassadaga (2007)
Notable lyric: Well, I went back to my rented Cadillac and company jet / Like a newly orphaned refugee, retracing my steps / All the way to Cassadaga to commune with the dead / They said, “You’d better look alive”
A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997 (1997)
In 1995, I was 12 years old. Conor Oberst, lead singer and mastermind behind Bright Eyes, was three years older. And, yet, he was writing songs like this one. This song, from the first Bright Eyes album, is tortured and raw. In typical Conor fashion, his voice is a stratchy record. Yet, he never screams for no reason; there is always melody, harmony, or message in his voice.
Stand out lyric: Fill the bathtub with ice and hope this fever will break / Like a heart / Easily
From Lifted Or the Story Is In the Soil, Keep Your Ear to The Ground (2002)
From the first three words, repeated thrice, you have little idea of what this song has in mind for you. It waltzes around you, like a sad, forgotten photograph. It makes me feel a little bit like that last shot in The Shining, when we find Jack Torrence frozen forever in the time period that he has always been from, caretaker forevermore.
I love the strings in this, and the 3/4 time signature.
Notable lyric: We used to think that sound was something pure…