And every time I play four winds, they start singing Santa clause is coming to town over it 😭 I love that song so much I wish they wouldn’t do this

Any news on the 33 1/3 for im wide awake, it’s morning? it was due early 2024 but just didn’t happen for some reason, but i was really looking forward to it.

I’m trying to go to all 3 Texas dates, but I live on the border. So San Antonio is the closest drive (5hours) and I really really hope they play all threes :,,)

I wanna shout, Elon musk… I’d kill him in an alley over five dice. 😭 it would heal me I think

Secretly Canadian is celebrating 20 years of Digital Ash and I'm Wide Awake. Those albums are on sale, plus Fevers and Mirrors, Down in the Weeds, and the whole Companion series up to 50% off. So vinyl for the Companion series is $9.99 each. It's a 48hr sale that started yesterday. https://www.secretlystore.com/store/bright-eyes?page=1

Everyday I continue to love this album more than release. I love the sound of Conor’s voice with little more age and maturity to it. The production all around sounds very bright eyes while also being very clean and current. Lyrically this is one of the strongest I’ve heard as well. Real feel 105 is my absolute high point personally and I think it captures everything I love more everyday about the project. Wondering if fans generally agree or disagree with this take

Yes I know, I'm the worst and I know I'm creepy... And obsessive but he's the only thing that makes me happy.

My ex is taking my dogs away from me. I'll never see them ever again. I'll never be happy again.

I drew the crown on a sticky note with gel pens..

Thought I’d shoot my shot here…did anyone by chance get a video of when Conor came down to the crowd at the end and gave hugs and handshakes. I was one of the first people to get a hug and though i doubt there’s a video (I was in the moment), I’d love to see any angle of it if there is.

Someone asked so I threw it together real quick! Enjoy

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6JaMJ0mBLVQBgW8G8PxAju?si=om4fzw6-QvG45Ik8YBIRrA&pi=fak6O6TSShSxP

Hello

Is there a playlist that has all Songs of the current Tour in it?

I need to send it to my boyfriend who will join me on the concert but calls conor whiny 😅

Ok so I don't know if those of you who were at the Crystal ballroom for their 2nd night (the 26th) also experienced this but I sensed a very weird and unsettling energy in the audience that night. Their first night at the Crystal ballroom (the 25th) was amazing and perfect show but the 2nd night just seemed strange to me. Here's my story of what happened: I was there with my dad on the 2nd night and I was weaving my way through the crowd to make my way to the front where I was the prior night so I could get a good view of the stage. (My dad always stays behind and stands in the back.) I was getting close to the spot I was in the prior night when a dude stopped my by putting one hand on my chest and said "Where ya going?" I said that I was just going to the front and he shook his head and pushed me back. (I am a 16 year old guy so I am a very easy target for entitled middle aged white parents.) I thought that was weird so I stepped to the side thinking that I already had a good enough view from where I was. I was minding my own business and then I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned around expecting to see my dad but instead I saw a short woman and she said "She can't see because you're in the way" and so I turned all the way around to see an even shorter woman standing behind me holding a copy of Lifted (great album). I tried to be friendly and smiled at her because she seemed pretty shy and I said "Oh I'm sorry I did not see you there. I'll just stand over here." And I moved completely out of here way and further into the crowd. But the other woman kept insisting that I stand BEHIND her entire party (consisting of about 5 or 6 people even though they could clearly see the stage now that I had moved) because "It's rude to stand in front of a bunch of women." (It's not.) I tried to reason with her and said something along the lines of "Look, we're just here to have a good time and enjoy the music can't we just get along?" And she wouldn't stop commanding me to stand behind her so I stepped behind her and her husband hoping that she would stop being entitled. After standing there for a minute I said to her husband "Why am I not allowed to just stand over there?" He didn't even answer my question and instead said "Once the band starts playing we're all gonna move forward." Assuming that he stopped being an asshole, I said "OK that's all I needed to hear. Am I being clear with you?" (What I really meant by that was "Are we gonna be nice to each other now?") And he said "I'm being clear with YOU, buddy" like he thought that he was intimidating. I said "Alright then" with a smile and reached out to shake his hand to make it clear that I was not intimidated by him at all. But he just stood there staring at me like a weirdo. Then the woman (his wife) turned to me and said something I could not her so I said "What?" And it took her a few seconds to figure out what she was going to say to me next and then she said "Don't 'what' me. I'm old enough to be your mom and you don't get to just cut in front of us because you think your cool especially because we were here first." These people didn't seem to have been to a concert before to know how it works. I know that those kind of entitled people try to judge me in anyway they can just because I'm a teenager and because they are really just unhappy with themselves and try to bring people down with them to make themselves feel better. I ended up moving to the opposite side of the stage (mike's side) because I did not want to spend the rest of the night with those people and was actually able to get a much better view even closer to the stage. Anyway, there was that thing that happened to me, and then there was a medical incident about halfway through the set that happened right next to where I was which was also unusual. And my dad later claimed that he saw a woman shouting aggressively at the security guards and getting in their faces and that the couple that was next to him was making out and dancing in a way that was way to innapropriate for a public setting the entire show. Overall, the audience just seemed really aggressive that night. I thought I bought tickets for the Bright Eyes concert and not the Metallica concert lol. Does anyone else feel the same way or is it just me? Please let me know. 🙏

If anyone else wrote this song it would be on their Greatest Hits album. For Conor it's just a throwaway that you can only find in the depths of YouTube.

https://youtu.be/qCYJVsbma3E?si=cb4ROC4Bp6Xva_D4

Well there's endless entertainment in thinking the world is gonna end And I've lived some nights convinced of it but I keep waking up again With my girl wrapped round my body and a towel wrapped round my head She says "you passed out in the bathtub, angel, I thought that you were dead"

Such a gem.

Anyone know who sings backup on loose leaves? Did some googling but can’t find any info. Lowkey sounds like Brandon flowers from the killers to me

Hi all,

I produce Life of the Record and just wanted to mention the recent Wide Awake episode here with some more detail. It's a 2 hour audio documentary featuring Conor and Mike commenting on each song and their experiences of making the record as a whole (and a bit about how they made Digital Ash at this time as well). Both of them were so generous to put up with all my questions about the project and just this era when Conor was so prolific and inspired by his move to New York. Mike adds a lot of context to how the songs were arranged and why they resonate and Conor mentions some specifics of what inspired his lyrics.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or at my website here: https://lifeoftherecord.com/#/bright-eyes/

I hope you enjoy the episode. Thanks!

Dan

https://preview.redd.it/9mloary3zsfe1.png?width=1800&format=png&auto=webp&s=db9737833915efa623d004fc0b6a49edce207613

So wholesome!! https://www.instagram.com/p/DFYckMMSqaH/?hl=en

January 2005. I’m working on the west end of Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado. On my lunch break, I walk a few blocks down to Bart’s Music. A friend had recently shown me a write-up in some music magazine, featuring a wide-eyed, floppy-haired kid, declaring: “He's your type.” She was correct. I was intrigued. So off I ventured to satisfy my somewhat lusty curiosity.

I can only assume I stopped in for a latte at Spruce Confections before heading back to the office.  Maybe a cookie too. My desk, tucked in the far back right corner on the lower level, was a home base in what would turn out to be a tumultuous second half of my twenties. But I didn’t know that yet. The tides hadn’t shifted. 

It was a Friday. That detail matters because my Megadeth-loving boss had a strict rule: headphones only on Fridays. Taking full advantage, I unwrapped the CD, slid it into my Power Mac G5 Tower, and put on my headphones.

And everything changed.

There was now a “before” and an “after.”

It was so….wordy? And with that wordiness came intimacy and honesty and a rawness that I was unused to. My “before” had been filled with the lingering grimy angst of the ‘90s: the Pixies, Nirvana, Superchunk, college radio darlings like Stereolab. But this? This was something else, it sounded familiar, like I had been waiting for it. A secret I’d been keeping, finally rising to the surface. 

Now it’s 20 years later, and I’m the mom who waters plants, feeling like “I haven’t been gone very long but it feels like a lifetime,”  Still that curious girl on her lunch break, yet someone else entirely. Thanks for changing the trajectory of the soundtrack to my life. Happy 20th Birthday to I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning. 

I´ll see them in hamburg & berlin in june and I was wondering how long I have to wait if I wanna get a spot in the first 10% of the crowd... also, how hard is it to get a setlist? absolutely cant wait!

Has anyone here picked up playing the dice game? Oddly enough since the album has been released, I have been playing it a lot. Not because of bright eyes but because I became friends with someone that loves it (who doesn’t care about BE) Was wondering if it’s some modern cultural game that slipped past my radar.

Hey! I was just wondering if there are other Bright Eyes fans out there like me! I've always been super into all things spiritual/ metaphysical/ esoteric/ mystical. A Jung and Steiner nerd. Cassadaga really scratched that itch for a long time but lately I've been so into The People's Key and holy shit it blows me away. Even the companion version is rad!! I just feel like it's so cool that Bright Eyes really dove into that mystical/ sci-fi wave. I'm forever grateful for it. It's a really special piece of the catalog to me. It's pretty cool that the BE albums resonate with every part of me from my younger emo self to now.

Ok please forgive my ignorance but I haven't been to a ton of concerts and I don't know if people do this or not. I saw Bright Eyes in Seattle and they were amazing and now I want to see them again. Is it weird to go to another show on the same tour? Will they play different songs or would it be the same?

It frustrated me then, and in seeing the 20th anniversary stuff online, it weirdly still bums me out. I know basically every BE album after 1/25/05 has unfortunately been under appreciated by the general public, but there’s something especially sad to me about how Digital Ash was treated back then. To me, those two albums were really two sides of the same coin, and it was so beautiful that they decided to release them simultaneously. Almost a double album. I can’t think about one without thinking about the other.

I dunno. It feels to me like people who only loved IWAIM were really missing the whole context of both albums. It always confused me so much because Digital Ash is such a gorgeous, poetic, stunning complementary piece of music. Everyone is entitled to their opinions of course, but I hope that the band knows that Digital Ash is very deeply loved by some of the fans and is just as significant to the Bright Eyes legacy as IWAIM (and all of the other albums) <3