Bright Eyes - LIFTED or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground [2LP]

Format: 2LP
Catalogue No.: DOC286LP
Barcode: 0656605158624
Release Date: 11 Nov 2022
Genre: Indie/Alternative

 “The first three are innocent in a way, because we didn’t have an audience when we were making them,” says Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. “But from ‘Lifted’ on, I was definitely aware of an audience. ‘Lifted’ was well-received right away, and then everything happened with ‘Wide Awake’ and ‘Digital Ash’.”

 Those two albums came out simultaneously. And their lead singles - ‘Take It Easy (Love Nothing)’, from the austere, remote ‘Digital Ash’, and ‘Lua’, from the warm, folky ‘Wide Awake’ - debuted in the top two slots on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘First Day of My Life’, also from ‘Wide Awake’, would later be voted the Number One Love Song Of All Time by NPR Music’s readers’ poll.

 Bright Eyes had officially broken through. It was a heady, exciting time, but also fraught and tense, both because of the band’s careening new fame, and because of the state of the world. When Bright Eyes made their Tonight Show debut in 2006, they chose to perform none of their shiny new hits, instead delivering a searing, harrowing rendition of their caustic anti-Bush anthem, ‘When The President Talks To God’.

 These days, Oberst is still amusing himself by messing with the extremes Bright Eyes baked into this era’s releases, extremes that reflected the polar, with-us-or-against-us, fractious feel of the times. The reworked ‘Digital Ash’ tracks, originally so clean and elegant, are, on the companion EP, full of “harmonica and mandolins - folky vibes,” says Oberst. While the analogue sweetness of the ‘Wide Awake’ songs have been put through a detached nihilism filter.

 The three ’Companion’ releases are pressed on Opaque Gold vinyl.

‘LIFTED Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your
Ear To The Ground’
The Big Picture
Method Acting
False Advertising
You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will.
Lover I Don’t Have to Love
Bowl of Oranges
Don’t Know When But a Day is Gonna Come
Nothing Gets Crossed Out
Make War
Waste of Paint
From a Balance Beam
Laura Laurent
Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (to Love And to Be
Loved)