Description

From warm folk-rock to austere electro, plaintive, earnest ballads to glacially cool guitar noise, Bright Eyes has tried on pretty much every sound that s ever inspired them, just to see if they could. Along the way they ve collaborated with many of their influences, heroes, and peers, from Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris to Jenny Lewis, Nick Zinner and Britt Daniel. And they ve seen their songs covered by many more, including Lorde, The Killers, and Mac Miller.

For a band that s 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 that s what really strikes you when you sit down to fully take in thenine Bright Eyes albums being reissued, in chronological order, in groups of three, beginning spring 2022.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 – they ve also simultaneously been assembling a robust, mature, narratively cohesive discography. I ve 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 I m not ashamed to sing years later makes me feel pretty happy.

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