Unlike the singer’s rootsy solo work, Down In The Weeds is rich in what brought many of us to Bright Eyes in the first place: the drama.
The established sound of Bright Eyes' melancholia is as strong as ever on Down In The Woods yet it still feels fresh. Oberst's ability to consistently write sublimely distressing melodies as well as alluringly imaginative lyrics is unrivalled, and their grand return is really what we needed this year.
This album is for Bright Eyes what Father of the Bride was to Vampire Weekend, a towering, multilayered, ambitious expansion of the band’s aesthetic conducted through a frank reexamination of its character.
Down in the Weeds avoids being either a phoned-in nostalgia trip or a wildly new direction that would alienate fans. Instead it continues Bright Eyes' evolution without skipping a beat, and manages to be one of their stronger records in the process.
Down in the Weeds… was always going to be a song worth singing - whether that was as the warning they devised it as, or as the elegy that it’s become.
If the immensely underrated Cassadaga was a roadtrip across America scored by psychedelic preachers and country singers in smoky bars, Down in the Weeds... is a twisted companion piece, one where the travelers rush home in fear that it's the last chance they'll ever get.
So many of the band’s great lyrical conquests have set out with an aim of finding the physical point within an abstract, from the bottom of everything to the centre of energy, existing on the precipice where drunk talk meets genuine profundity. But their sonic explorations in Down In The Weeds reach new heights, too.
Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was, recorded before the pandemic, features typically direct poetry that implores amity as much as it excoriates power.
What comes reverberating out of Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was is Bright Eyes’ deep desire to create beautiful and ambitious music, which they’ve certainly done – even if the results aren’t as essential as what’s come before.
There’s a relentlessness of tone to Down in the Weeds... which, over 14 songs, can be wearing, so it won’t be for all, but there’s no denying that Oberst’s muse is solidly intact, and that there’s some brilliantly evocative maudlin damage here for listening to as the world burns.
Down in the Weeds mostly sounds like a fun reunion between old friends. It's a logical continuation of 2007's slick Cassadaga (less so 2011's rock-inclined The People's Key) — but given the renaissance Oberst has enjoyed with his side-projects in recent years, it doesn't quite live up to Bright Eyes' lofty name.
Though Bright Eyes' reunion is a cause of celebration, Down in the Weeds is at odds with itself—where the band balances music that is ambitious in scope with some of Obert's most nakedly personal work. But just like his complicated and sometimes narcissistic persona, there's a good argument to make about how his over-the-top approach perfectly suits him.
Down in the Weeds is a mix of old and new and old Bright Eyes, as well as hit and miss.
#5 | / | The Sunday Times |
#9 | / | NBHAP |
#10 | / | DIY |
#12 | / | The Forty-Five |
#21 | / | Double J |
#27 | / | Sputnikmusic |
#40 | / | Slant Magazine |
#42 | / | Hot Press |
#45 | / | Uncut |
#50 | / | Under the Radar |