The world is a very different place to when Bright Eyes released their last album back in 2011. Now the band are back with a new record that tries to make sense of these bewildering times as much as it gazes inwards.
A scene-setting intro begins with the sound of a chattering crowd before giving way to a woman speaking in Spanish — her only English words are “your most vivid nightmares”. A honky-tonk piano and chopped-up vocal snippets follow. It sets a disconcerting tone, from which the album rarely wavers.
There’s a funereal grandeur to it all. There are big orchestral surges, doleful trumpets, downtrodden synths and plaintive bagpipes, all combining for something inescapably foreboding. Conor Oberst’s lyrics often appear as obscure observations, reflecting on climate change, or reconciliation, or crumbling civilisation, or something else entirely. But he’s also plainly personal — “catastrophising my birthday, turning 40” on Forced Convalescence, or dwelling on the memory of his ex-wife while making soup on Hot Car in the Sun.
Oberst’s trembling, just-about-together voice is the ideal conduit for it all, none more so on the lung-bustingly desperate melodrama of Calais to Dover, proving that while the future is unsure, Bright Eyes’ worth certainly isn’t.
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