Bright Eyes
Five Dice, All Threes
DEAD OCEANS
After a series of major soul-shaking setbacks and unbearable sorrows, Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott—the brain trust of Bright Eyes—are fully back in action with an eleventh album all about the major soul-shaking setbacks and unbearable sorrows life has to offer. The project has always been immovable from this lyrical setting, even when its melodies and arrangements are more chipper than doleful—say, on the childlike-wondrous (and yes, whistling) “Bells and Whistles,” the fireside-folksy “Real Feel 105°,” or the souped-up synthiness of “Trains Still Run on Time” on Five Dice, All Threes. For Oberst, within the context of Bright Eyes, despair is a dank dish best served cold for all of its courses, spiced to the taste of the songwriter’s forever-rickety vocal tones and ripped-from-the-heart vibe.
More so than in their recent past, co-producers Mogis and Oberst and arranger Walcott parse their sparseness and take maximalist swings with their swelling soundscapes, adding genuinely sophisticated thrills such as old-timey piano and multi-tracked banjos to “Bas Jan Ader” and pulsating, distorted bass and brass tones to “Rainbow Overpass.” The lyrics to “The Time I Have Left” loll sullenly, cradled by the track’s tentative piano balladry and morose co-vocals from The National’s Matt Berninger (what would you expect a song that welcomes questions of mortality to sound like?). But Oberst never lets something beautiful and bright take to the sunlight; he stays the miserabilist throughout the lullaby breaks of “Bells and Whistles,” intoning lines such as “Didn’t feel good, wasn’t eating well / In the photo booth, made me hate myself, what a slob” with the gravity of a mumblecore Macbeth. Neither “Hate” nor “Spun Out” signify a picnic for Oberst, either.
That said, the songwriter genuinely seems to relish the bad moods and sad life-loops on Five Dice, All Threes, in particular with duet partner Cat Power on “All Threes.” Though you wouldn’t necessarily call their performances hammy, each singer seems to enjoy the confusion of “cosplay escape rooms,” blown speakers, and Bud Lights until the closing line: “You were beautiful before / Until you weren’t.” Maybe Oberst and Bright Eyes just need a little nudging—and a lot of cat power—to make the darkness feel as light as their Buds.
