Category: Art

From Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

What sets this song apart isn’t the song, necessarily, but what follows the song. The track is 8:29 long, but the music stops at 2:35. The rest of the track is an interview. Close scrutiny suggests that the track is, in fact, a satire or perhaps a parody. At the very least, it is staged. It takes place between a radio DJ and Conor Oberst. The DJ addresses many of Conors “quirks” in both appearance and music. It can make for a difficult listen if you take it at face value. However, when it comes to Bright Eyes, never take anything at face value.

Notable lyric: Well, winterÂ’s gonna end, / I’Â’m gonna clean these veins again. / So close to dying that I can finally / start living.

listen here

From Lifted Or the Story Is In the Soil, Keep Your Ear to The Ground (2002)

I’m not sure what I can say about this song that I haven’t said about others. It’s a pretty by-the-book Bright Eyes standard: lyrics riddled with self-doubt, emotional outburst at the end, and a solid musical arrangement. Yet, while some songs end in depression, and others in jubulation, this song just ends.

Notable lyric: Like when I fell under the weight of a schoolboy crush. / Started carrying her books and doing lots of drugs. / I almost forgot who I was, / but came to my senses.

From Cassadaga (2007)

Notable lyric: Out the window / as the car rolled / away / She just vanished / into a thick mist / of change

From Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

Bright Eyes enjoys, with gusto, adding in non-musical sound to their songs. Fevers and Lifted both began with long, long, long intros, seemingly of an unrelated nature. Both to have music fade in behind the sound, and finally the song takes place. While we don’t get a multi-minute children’s book narration, or a conversation between unknown individuals, we get tv sets, bangs, clanks, and pretty low quality music in general. Conor and a piano, and we wonder, is he in his house? Is he saying something about the state of music? Is this grand, or just lazy?

Notable lyric: But no matter what I would do in an attempt to replace / All these pills that I take, trying to balance my brain / See the curious girl with that look on her face / So surprised she stares out from her display case

listen here

From Noise Floor: Rarities 1998-2005 (2006)

I first heard this song on Letterman. There was a lot of buzz. Bright Eyes on Letterman! So we tuned in, and the band got up, and they played this song. And no one had ever heard it before. It was delightful, in many ways, to be party to that. It was a new song, and he was showcasing it live on national television. I went online and found a video of the performance, and then I found an mp3 of the audio from the performance. That was it, though. No one knew where the song came from, or where it would go. And all this begged the question: “When is he going to release it?” A Bright Eyes mystery, solved in 2005.

Notable lyric: so believe you’re who you are / and just stay in character / but at the end of the play the audience walks away / and you’ll be shivering cold on a well-lit stage.

listen here

From Lifted Or the Story Is In the Soil, Keep Your Ear to The Ground (2002)

Notable lyric: You write such pretty words / But life’s no storybook / Love’s an excuse to get hurt / And to hurt.

From Cassadaga (2007)

I have to admit, I didn’t pay much attention to this song. That is, until there was a music video contest for it. I was excited. I listened to the song over and over, getting all sorts of ideas. Then they released more details, and the contest required that you only do a video for one of two thirty second clips of the song. I was outraged. Why can’t we do the whole song? My outrage, however, didn’t taint the song. It’s still a beautiful, straight-forward song. There is a neat part where the voice who was doing the “movin’ out” part of the refrains takes a turn, and Conor sings the “movin’ out” part. I like that.

Notable lyric: Mixed up tea leaves (movin’ out) / Phantom pain (movin’ out) / Fuzzy logic in the the crazy rain / Getting better (movin’ out) / every day if the / brakeman turns my way

listen here

From Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

If you ever wanted a look into the manic side of Bright Eyes (rather than the depressive side), this is the song. This song is a rambling, scrambling fierce journey into obsession. Singing this song, the narrator almost sounds out of breath, struggling to get all this out before the end of the song. How can you not love a tortured version of “You are my sunshine, My only sunshine. You are my sunshine, My only sunshine”?

Notable lyric: Well, I drug your ghost across the country / And we plotted out my death / In every city, memories would whisper, / “Here is where you rest.”

listen here

From Oh Holy Fools (2001)

Honestly, I’m not in love with the sound of this song. I find the harmonies to be mostly off-putting. It’s still musical, don’t get me wrong, but it’s an uncomfortable series of chords for me. Then he lifts it off when he sings the “refrains”, which I can appreciate. It feels a little like Bach. However, I had to include this song for the notable lyric, which is one of my favorites. You have to hear him sing it, though.

Notable lyric: I know a girl who cries when she practices violin / Because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her / And then the melody comes pouring out her eyes

listen here

From A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997 (1997)

This is a simple song, musically, that has a simple concept, lyrically. It’s all about lights. There’s one for this, and there’s one for that, and that’s basically the song. Observe more lights, repeat. Yet, there is still a meloncholy draped over this song. Bright Eyes proves that even a song about light (cheerful, warming, brightening light) can make you feel depressed. Yet, we’re unsure how to feel. The song ends talking about a lighthouse (we assume) that watches over the ships, and it feels little optimistic.

Notable lyric: There’s one that waits for closing time / And there’s one that gets left on all night / And there’s one that marks the western sky / And it shines down on the quiet street

From Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

Any self-respecting (or should it be self-loathing?) Bright Eyes fan knows the name Arienette. But who is she? She seems to feature in a number of Bright Eyes song, and rarely as a positive figure. We get the sense from his lyrical imagery that she’s broken his heart at least once. Is she an altar ego? Is she an oasis? Is she a jackal? Did she make him escape to New York? Is she even real or is she a simple, but effective, dramatic device?

Notable lyric: And the moon, it leaves silver but never sleeps / And then the silver turns to gray / Oh stay with me, Arienette / Until the wolves are away

From Noise Floor: Rarities 1998-2005 (2006)

The Noise Floor compilation helped sew up a lot of empty pockets in my Bright Eyes collection. One of those missing songs, a song I’d heard years ago courtesy of Jeff Gabhart, but which I’d lost track of, was this one. It includes the Conor yell-line-repeat-line-yell-line approach to ending a song. Pick a phrase, and say it over and over, sometimes modifying it a little bit. For some artists, I find that lazy. For Bright Eyes, I find that poignant. But, I am biased.

Notable lyric: I’m sorry about the phone call / and waking you / I know that it is late / but thank you for talking / cause I needed to / yeah, somethings just can’t wait

listen here

From Lifted Or the Story Is In the Soil, Keep Your Ear to The Ground (2002)

I love how this one starts off. You hear a tape recorder. It plays a short clip, in which a female voice is heard. She says, “It goes on forever and ever and ever”, then it stops, rewinds, and plays “-ever and ever”, then it stops, rewinds, and plays, “-goes on forever and ever…” Meanwhile, a sound, a building sound, is growing behind the tape recorder. Then it bursts into life.

Notable lyric: So I wait for the day when I’ll hear the key / as it turns in the lock / and the guard will say to me, / “Oh my patient prisoner you have waited for this day and finally / you are free! / You are free! / You are freezing!”

listen here

From I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning (2005)

While 2005 saw the release of a “techno” Bright Eyes album, it also saw the opposite. Land Locked Blues, and the other songs on this album, were of a stripped-down, folky (bleeding slightly into country and western), and generally warm manner. This song mosies, as one would say, with clever turns of phrase and brilliant song-writing.

Notable lyric: If you walk away, I’ll walk away / First tell me which road you will take / I don’t want to risk our paths crossing someday / So you walk that way, I’ll walk this way

listen here