After moving their catalog to Secretly Group last year, Bright Eyes have announced they will be reissuing all nine of their studio albums. Each reissue will be accompanied by a “companion” EP featuring five re-recorded versions of songs from the original album. The first three reissues – A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997, Letting Off the Happiness, and Fevers and Mirrors – will be out May 27 via Dead Oceans. Today, Bright Eyes have unveiled three songs from the project, ‘Falling Out of Love at This Volume’, ‘Contrast & Compare’ (featuring Waxahatchee), and ‘Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh’ (featuring Conor Oberst’s Better Oblivion Community Center collaborator Phoebe Bridgers). Take a listen and check out the project’s trailer below.
“It’s a meaningful way to connect with the past that doesn’t feel totally nostalgic and self-indulgent,” Conor Oberst explained in a statement. “We are taking these songs and making them interesting to us all over again. I like that. I like a challenge. I like to be forced to do something that’s slightly hard, just to see if we can. My thing was they had to sound different from the originals, we had to mess with them in a substantial way.”
Bright Eyes released their first new album in nearly a decade, Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was, in 2020. They’re set to head out on a US tour in support of the LP in March.
A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997: A Companion EP Tracklist:
1. Driving Fast Through a Big City at Night
2. Solid Jackson
3. A Celebration Upon Completion
4. Falling Out of Love at This Volume
5. Exaltation on a Cool Kitchen Floor
6. Double Joe (Simon Joyner cover)
Letting Off The Happiness: A Companion EP Tracklist:
1. The Difference in the Shades
2. The City Has Sex [feat. Waxahatchee]
3. Contrast and Compare [feat. Waxahatchee]
4. Kathy With a K’s Song [feat. M Ward]
5. St. Ides Heaven [feat. Phoebe Bridgers] (Elliott Smith cover)
6. June on the West Coast [feat. Becky Stark]
Fevers and Mirrors: A Companion EP Tracklist:
1. Haligh, Haligh, a Lie, Haligh [feat. Phoebe Bridgers]
2. A Scale, a Mirror, and Those Indifferent Clocks [feat. Phoebe Bridgers]
3. Arienette
4. Hypnotist (Song for Daniel H) (Lullaby for the Working Class cover)
5. When the Curious Girl Realizes She Is Under Glass [feat. Phoebe Bridgers]
6. A Spindle, a Darkness, a Fever, and a Necklace [feat. Phoebe Bridgers]
