The new Bright Eyes album, “Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was,” has a similar emotional tone as Radiohead’s “A Moon Shaped Pool,” but it’s hard to articulate that precise tone—there’s grief and mourning, but there’s also a sense of passing along knowledge, wisdom obtained via grueling sadness. This album also feels really close in many ways to Oberst’s solo “Ruminations,” which was pretty fucking desolate, but “Down in the Weeds” turns away from that vein of despair by offering moments of musical joy, lyrical reminders to “hold on” and “keep on going,” and depictions of love and connection.
“Down in the Weeds” is a big album. There are big sounds on this album—swelling strings, Flea’s tasteful slap bass, horns, bagpipes—and fine background sounds as well, with hammered dulcimer, Marxophone, and beautiful backing vocals on a lot of the songs. The backing vocals in particular sound so good. On songs like “Mariana Trench,” “Pan and Broom,” “Persona Non Grata,” “Tilt-A-Whirl,” and “To Death’s Heart (In Three Parts)” the backing vocals almost rise to the level of duet with Oberst, and they have some of the vibe of the songs on Vampire Weekend’s “Father of the Bride” that featured Danielle Haim.
“To Death’s Heart (In Three Parts)” especially is a beautiful song, with some grim lyrics from Oberst:
“There’s nothing left no more/To tear apart/Agonies are infinite/And sympathies just aren’t/They run out/I’ve seen that void/Tried not to stare/There’s bodies in the Bataclan/There’s music in the air.”
The background vocals on this song come to the front right when they hit the line about the Bataclan and the effect is startling—I think I’ve listened to this song maybe 20 or so times already, and every time I hear that part, it makes me want to listen to the song again immediately.
“Down in the Weeds” is an album full of intensely felt and compelling songs—Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott all went through intense life changes since the band’s last album, and you can hear all that in the lyrics. This is definitely a looking-back album, an album that has an underlying tone of: life is wild and tough and brutal. In some recent interviews, the band has said that they recorded a new album because they’re old friends and they wanted to make music together again, and you can tell that too. It’s a great album. It feels sorrowful but not resigned to hopelessness.