Bright Eyes

Bright Eyes have released a new track and accompanying video, “Rainbow Overpass,” from their forthcoming tenth studio album, Five Dice, All Threes, out on September 20th via Dead Oceans. The bright, punky anthem is propelled by acoustic guitar, horns, and fist-pumping gang vocals featuring Alex Orange Drink of The So So Glos, the accelerating tempo like a speeding car driving off the eponymous rainbow overpass. Of the new track, Bright Eyes’ frontman Conor Oberst says, “Alex and I wrote a lot of the songs together, but ‘Rainbow Overpass’ is the only one he gets [to sing] a verse. He’s kinda like my hype man, getting a little Beastie Boys on the shit!

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They grew up on punk rock and the Beasties, so there are a lot of little bursts of other voices. I like that. It creates energy. Sometimes music can feel flat until you get into a live situation, when there’s adrenaline and raw energy. Instead of working in reverse, where that happens as we tour, I was trying to get some of that energy onto the record.”The new track’s release follows “Bells & Whistles,” which was released in June to critical acclaim and immediately landed on national radio playlists globally. Self-produced, and recorded at ARC Studios, in Omaha, Nebraska, Five Dice, All Threes is a record of uncommon intensity and tenderness, communal exorcism and personal excavation. These are, of course, qualities that fans have come to expect from Bright Eyes, nearly three decades into their career.

The tight-knit band of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott tends to operate in distinct sweeping movements: each unique in its sound and story but unified by a sense of ambition and ever-growing emotional stakes. The beloved band’s 10th studio album features guest performances from long time friends Cat Power, The National’s Matt Berninger and The So So Glos’ Alex Orange Drink. Even with this rich history behind them, these new songs exude a visceral thrill like nothing they have attempted before. Conor has always sung in a voice that conveys a sense of life-or-death gravity.

At times throughout Five Dice, All Threes, you may feel worried for him; other times, he may seem like the only one with the clarity to get us out of this mess.As is usual with Bright Eyes’ work, the music comes loaded with subtext that invites deep listening—the signature touch of a band who has always honored the album as its own exalted work of art. With the new songs the trio embrace the elusive quality that has made them so enduring and influential across generations and genres, bringing their homespun sound from an Omaha bedroom to devoted audiences around the world. In Conor’s songwriting lies a promise that our loneliest thoughts and feelings can take on grander shapes when passed between friends, blasted through speakers, or shouted among crowds. Five Dice, All Threes is as confessional and unguarded as Conor has sounded in years. Throughout these timelessly constructed yet unabashedly modern songs, he earns his place among a rare class of songwriters who have grown more fearless and boundless with age.