When Bright Eyes posted a video of a kid known only as ‘nephew Sam‘ announcing “new Bright Eyes album this summer by the way” on Instagram in June, it came to the surprise of even their tight circle of hardcore fans. Sure, they had posted a callout asking for fans to be in a new music video. And, yeah, there were the behind the scenes photos in the studio where they said they were “baking cake”. But, working on a Bright Eyes timeline, it seemed unlikely there would be a whole record so soon.
The band released ‘Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was’, their first album since 2011’s ‘The People’s Key’, in 2020. In the years that followed, ‘Weeds’ felt like something of a victory lap for the band, made up of Conor Oberst, Nate Walcott and Mike Mogis. They had spent nearly a decade apart, during which Oberst worked on solo albums, punk band Desaparecidos and the Mystic Valley Band, a project with Walcott and other friends that Walcott jokingly jabs at: “we don’t talk about the Mystic Valley Band”.
While the three of them stayed in touch, it was a time marked by now many-times rehashed personal traumas and grief, particularly for Oberst. ‘Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was’ felt like a triumphant return, one soundtracked with horns and a 30-piece orchestra. It was a homecoming. Over the following years, Bright Eyes toured Weeds incessantly with said orchestra. They also revisited their old work with the ‘Companion’ EPs, a series of re-recordings of a handful of their own songs plus a cover or two, many of which feature friends like Phoebe Bridgers and Maria Taylor. Oberst also undertook a residency at venues in Los Angeles and New York City, inviting one-time bandmates and collaborators onstage. With all of that well-deserved celebrating, it seemed unlikely we’d get anything new right away.
These projects have served as a reminder that, while Bright Eyes may have started out as a teenaged Conor Oberst on an acoustic guitar in his bedroom, it’s been a long time since the project was just one guy. Over the two decades plus of Bright Eyes as we now know it, their albums and side projects have been defined by the cast of players, largely friends from Omaha, who have joined the three core members: Todd and Orenda Fink, Emmylou Harris, Ted Stevens, Maria Taylor, Jenny Lewis and so many more. Perhaps that’s why it comes as no surprise that their 11th record, ‘Five Dice, All Threes’, was born from Oberst working with the artist Alex Orange Drink, who co-wrote several tracks.
When we catch up with Conor Oberst and Nate Walcott ahead of the release of ‘Five Dice, All Threes’, they’re in good spirits. The pair, who live near one another, are sitting on Oberst’s porch in the LA sun, a light breeze the only sign of anything like weather. Walcott admits that the time they spent on ‘Five Dice’ was “a pretty quick turnaround for us.” Their more than two decades of collaboration have built a strong foundation. Once the band had Oberst’s writing with Alex Orange Drink to work from, the band went back home to Omaha, where they keep a studio between Mogis and Oberst’s homes: “It’s a really ideal situation, and when friends come to record they can stay at my house,” says Oberst.
The result of all that collaboration and friendship is a record that builds on different eras of Bright Eyes. It’s got snippets from a Frank Sinatra movie, calling back to the bricolage of their past records. Its lyrics deal largely with mortality, like, well, all Bright Eyes songs. But there’s also something different: it’s a little looser than Weeds, less meticulous and verbose. It’s also funnier than you might expect, considering all that death. We caught up with Oberst and Walcott to talk about “Five Dice, All Threes” and this exciting era for Bright Eyes (and friends).
ROCK SOUND: Was this record born out of your collaboration with Alex Orange Drink?
CONOR: He was out here working on some other things and writing songs with Tim Armstrong [Rancid] at Tim’s studio while staying at my house. We were hanging out a lot. I was being my usual not motivated at all type of person, and we started working on songs. We didn’t really know what they were for at all, but some of them will end up on one of his projects. There are some that are clearly more Bright Eyes songs. Nate lives very close as well, so he started coming over and he had some musical ideas. The three of us hung out. Our friends Nik Freitas and Griffin Goldsmith have got little studios here too, so we just started making all these demos, and the next thing you know, we had a lot of songs and it seemed like there was a record there. We started sharing them with Mike [Mogis], took it all back to Omaha, and recorded everything with a little more intention once we got into our studio there.
RS: It feels a little looser than ‘Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was’. Maybe because it’s so collaborative, it sounds like you’re having fun.
CONOR: I would say it was fun. I feel like every time we make a record, it’s a slightly different experience, but if you compare it to ‘Down in the Weeds’, they’re pretty much polar opposites. We spent almost three years recording that. We had Jon Theodore playing drums and Flea playing bass and Nate wrote all those beautiful arrangements for like, a 30 piece orchestra. We went to Capitol Studios with our friend Suzie Katayama who’s an incredible conductor and a great musician in New York. She helped on Elliott Smith’s albums and she’s a beautiful, wonderful lady, I love her so much. Whenever we do the big orchestra stuff, Nate composes it and then Suzy helps put it together and gets the musicians.
NATE: We had a much smaller crew for ‘Five Dice, All Threes’, but a lot of the personnel are people we’ve worked with. Going back to what you were saying about how it sounds lighter or more fun, for example on this record we had our friend Jason Boesel who we have all played with for like 20 years. Same with Griffin, the other drummer, not quite as long but he’s our friend and we know him really well and we’ve played with him a bunch. He’s backed Conor up on tours. Jason has played in Bright Eyes on and off since the early ‘00s. It felt more like a family affair.
RS: I don’t know if you agree or if it was intentional, but some things remind me more of Conor’s solo work. There’s some harmonica action and the lyrics are funnier in a way your solo stuff tends to be versus Bright Eyes.
CONOR: Yeah. I know what you mean. I guess I’m just comparing it because it was the last record, and I try to write in different ways depending on what I’m doing as far as the lyrics, but the themes and the delivery and the style of writing are lighter. The last record was very heavy and dense lyrically. I feel like this record is a bit more measured.
NATE: Concise?
CONOR: There’s less words. That’s one way to say it.
RS: I think there are more jokes. Maybe that’s not the right word, because there are obviously a lot of suicide references also. But there are jokes too.
CONOR: That’s the biggest joke of all!
RS: You’ve been revisiting your work a lot, with the Conor Oberst and Friends residencies and the ‘Companion’ EPs. Did having to revisit every era of Bright Eyes and your own work influence this record at all?
CONOR: That is fair to say, especially with the EPs. The residencies happened after we’d already finished this record, but after having done this for so long, sometimes it’s hard not to think about the past and all of the music we’ve all made together. Every time one of our records turns 20 years old or blah blah blah, someone wants us to do the thing that a lot of bands do where you go on tour and play the whole record. I think that shit is so corny. We’re never going to do that. We still play our old songs. We play the songs we want to play, but I don’t know. Even when it’s a band I like and a record I love, I still think it’s lame to do that personally. It’s a personal taste thing.
RS: Are there any songs that any of you really wanted to re-record that you couldn’t for whatever reason?
NATE: Everything was up for grabs, even songs like ‘First Day of My Life’ that we really thought we couldn’t do.
CONOR: Then we did.
NATE: Yeah. I feel like we went towards everything we didn’t want to do.
CONOR: It was interesting. I don’t really remember why we picked the songs we picked. For each of the records, I had to go back and listen to them, for one. I hadn’t listened to some of them for a really long time. I tried to pick ones that, from my standpoint as a vocalist and with the lyrics, I still felt conviction for or could stand behind the words and be able to sing it with a straight face without making myself feel too cringey.
RS: It’s hard, because for some of them you’re a teenager.
CONOR: A literal teenager. Standing behind everything you said when you were 15, yeah, it’s not the easiest position to be in. I think that for all the ones we picked, in my mind it’s like having a second chance. I think some of the songs are better than their original recordings, so it was nice to get another chance to arrange them and put it all together as we are now in our old age, our golden years, fading into the sunset.
NATE: Having accumulated a wealth of knowledge.
CONOR: Some songs I felt like really did deserve a second chance, and others I like the original recordings but we tried to approach it in a way that was quite a bit different. I’m bad with time and I’m bad with memories, but I don’t know how we got ourselves into that situation. Somehow we agreed to that and then we ended up doing it. We were like, holy shit, we have to record 50 songs or something. Then we were just in it and we couldn’t stop.
NATE: It was a year and a half, maybe two years.
CONOR: With a lot of different people. We did a lot of it at our studio in Omaha, but we did a lot of it out here at other friends’ studios. The ‘Lifted’ one for example, it’s songs that on the original recording are basically just me with an acoustic guitar. Now it’s Jon Theodore playing drums and Michael Mogis living out his Van Halen fantasy and playing crazy rock and roll guitar riffs. Stuff like that was fun and cool to do. It was such a different presentation of the song, but it’s still the same song.
RS: One of the most exciting and surprising features on this record is The National’s Matt Berninger [on ‘The Time I Have Left’]. How did that come about? Have you known him for a while?
CONOR: I have. I’ve been a fan of The National since ‘Alligator’ came out in 2005. I was living in New York, they were living there too. I love the band and I know all of them and they’re all very sweet people, but I know Matt best. We’ve done some podcasts together. I remember one time in around 2014 we did something the two of us and we met at some studio here. It was one of those ones where we were supposed to chat for like 30 minutes and we were there for two hours drinking wine and laughing and talking and at some point the engineer was like, “well, I think we got enough”. He’s so wonderful and generous and when we wrote that song, I could hear his voice. I could hear it. I texted him and I was like, hey, we’re making this song, I think you would sound great on it. I sent him our early version and he wrote right back and said he loved it and let’s do it. I don’t know where he was, but he recorded his part and sent it to us and we put it together and sent it back. We made sure that he liked it and that’s what you hear.
RS: You guys have been working together for over two decades now. How has your dynamic evolved? Do you work together in a different way than you did when you were younger? Less fighting? More?
CONOR: I’ll step over there and Nate can give his answer and I can give mine. There was a long time when we didn’t put out a Bright Eyes record, but we never stopped playing music together. Nate was in the Mystic Valley band with me and helped with solo records, Mike mixed stuff over the years for me, the two of them did a lot of film scoring and soundtrack stuff together. It’s not like we didn’t speak for ten years. We were always friends and we were always making music, but as far as the band, it was on the shelf. The thing I like about it is, if I make a solo record or work with a different producer, I work with a lot of new musicians and I have to explain myself in a way. With Mike and Nate, we’ve known each other for so long, we know what each of us are going to think about a certain idea. Sometimes we talk each other in and out of different things. I wouldn’t say we fight, but we get into some fiery discussions occasionally. I know, if I have a weird idea, what they’re going to think about it. That’s a level of comfort that you don’t get if you’re just walking in cold with different people.
NATE: That’s exactly right. I think it works that way for all of us. There is that unspoken communication that is, for the most part, really comfortable and makes for a smooth process. Not having to say everything. That happens a lot with me and Mike, and all three of us, me and Conor. There’s just something really great about that. Being able to anticipate what the other person is going to do. To answer your question about how it’s evolved, I guess it takes time, that evolution.
‘Five Dice, All Threes’ is out on September 20 via Dead Oceans.