Bright Eyes - Five Dice, All Threes

The eleventh studio album by Bright Eyes judders into life the same way as the ten that preceded it; awkwardly. Conor Oberst and company seem to revel in kicking things off obliquely, and this time around we get a blend of field recordings and studio chatter that does little to give away what might be coming next. The last Bright Eyes record, ‘Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was’, was their first in nearly a decade and, in many ways, sounded like it; it was a sprawling work that was stylistically undisciplined and sounded like Conor and his core collaborators, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott, were spilling as many of their pent-up ideas into the mix as possible, just in case they never got to make another one. ‘Five Dice, All Threes’ shares some similarities; as so often on Bright Eyes records, we are taken around the houses musically, with everything from ramshackle rock and roll (‘Bells and Whistles’, ‘El Capitan’) to softer, tender moments of signature Oberst storytelling, as on ‘Real Feel 105°’ and ‘Tiny Suicides’; these tracks are scored through with instrumental nods to the more rustic moments in the recent Bright Eyes oeuvre. 

What the record does have that ‘Down in the Weeds…’ didn’t, though, is a cohesive mood, one that reckons with life’s ups and downs – Conor sounds exuberant in some places and endearingly ragged in others. Plus, as is always the case with an artist as restless as him, there are ventures into new territory; the spacey ‘All Threes’ features beautiful vocal work from Cat Power, and the giddy ‘Spun Out’ has to be the first song in the band’s catalogue to marry record scratching with noodling guitar work. The album’s title suggests consistency, but in fact, it is a thrillingly unpredictable musical journey.