Best tunes of 2020: #18 Bright Eyes “Mariana trench”

Conor Oberst started out releasing music under the Bright Eyes name way back in 1998, a year after his previous band, Commander Venus, disbanded. It really all began as a solo project, with Oberst bringing in different musicians to help out with recording and live performances, but a trio eventually coalesced, with multi-instrumentalists, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott rounding things out. They were quite prolific in 2000s, releasing eight studio albums through to the end of that decade, including two (plus a live album) in 2005 alone. After one more album in 2011, the group went on hiatus for nine years before releasing the “Down in the weeds, where the world once was”, the album on which this song appears, in August 2020.

I was quite aware of Bright Eyes and their music throughout most of their pre-hiatus period and even saw them once (perhaps twice, if you count Conor Oberst solo). And though I tried a few times, I could never really get into them. But as I wrote when this last album appeared at number eight on my Best albums of 2020 list, I found a connection here that I didn’t have with Bright Eyes’s previous work. I still haven’t made the time to go back through their previous work to see if I had been wrong about it all along or if it would just be this one album for me. However, I can say that the sentiments with “Down in the weeds” matched my mood and that generality that I witnessed with the few people I was able to relate with in the early days of the pandemic.

“Well, they better save some space for me
In that growing cottage industry
Where selfishness is currency
People spend more than they make”

These are the words that kickstart track four and the fourth single to be released in advance of the album. It’s equally a commentary on the state of things, our commentator’s acknowledgement of his place in it all, and how he’s contributed to it. And yet, as meagre as the words are, the music travels in the other direction, looking instead to raise spirits rather than dampen them. It’s upbeat and catchy, the drums chug along and the bassline dances all around it, and Jessca Hoop’s appearance on backup vocals serves to lighten Oberst’s tone with her harmonies. And I just love the singalong chorus and the way it makes you look at you and me with a knowing smile and a questioning glance.