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 ser.