Bright Eyes Revisits the Past With Politically-Charged Album Anniversary Show at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl: Concert Review

Conor Oberst was only on the third song of “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday evening when he came to reflect on how the world has — or, more pointedly, hasn’t — changed in the 21 years since the album’s release. “It’s this much later and we’re in a war in the Middle East for the sake of rich people getting richer,” he told the audience as he cued up “Old Soul Song (for the New World Order),” a tune about attending a rally or protest in the Bush era, possibly about the Iraq war.

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It’s easy to remember Bright Eyes‘ earlier fare as dulcet and poetic; songs like “First Day of My Life” and “Lua” turned ruminations on love and heartbreak into resonant indie touchstones. But Bright Eyes’ performance at the Bowl was a reminder that the more things change, the more they tend to stay the same. Alongside longtime collaborators, Oberst took over the iconic venue on Saturday to celebrate Bright Eyes’ simultaneously-released albums “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” and “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn,” commemorating the 21st anniversary of both records in a display of millennial nostalgia and a refreshed yet just-as-fiery condemnation of Trump’s government, much in the way that they’d bemoaned the Bush administration two decades ago.

Oberst has, of course, been a frank and outspoken critic of the state of America dating back to his band’s ascent in the early aughts. By the time Bright Eyes released the stylistically opposed albums in January 2005, he’d established himself as something of his generation’s poet laureate, compared in reviews at the time to Bob Dylan and commended (or, as often, lambasted) for his loquacious lyrics dotted with two-dollar words. (Much of that generation, it should be noted, owes Oberst a debt of gratitude for adding “despondent” to their vocabulary.)

But his poetic aptitude was part of the charm of “I’m Wide Awake” and “Digital Ash,” records that tightened the songwriting structure of Bright Eyes’ prior music and emphasized their greatest strengths: storytelling as filtered through Oberst’s inner monologue and his perspective of the world at large. That approach yielded songs that were often sweet in style and tone yet satirized the state of the world in no uncertain terms, whether it was cracking open the newspaper to read of the war’s body count on “Road to Joy” or making love on the living room floor with the “noise in the background of a televised war” on “Land Locked Blues.”

Bright Eyes’ five-hour concert at the Bowl revisited that moment in time with aplomb and ease, making for a show that was as much spectacle as it was statement. The band began at 7 p.m. on the dot, just as the sun began to set over the Hollywood Hills, where the venue is nestled. Like with Bright Eyes’ prior celebration of the albums at Red Rocks earlier in May, a group of children dressed in clouds and airplane parts circled the stage as Oberst’s monologue from “At the Bottom of Everything” blared through the sound system, its lyrics modified for modern times: “She removed her aura ring in the off chance of infidelity so the matters of her heart would not be recorded or disseminated for profit,” he said of a woman sitting next to a man on a plane doomed to splash into the deep blue sea.

The first performance of the night was plainly dressed — a recreation of the “I’m Wide Awake” album art covered the back of the stage — as Oberst ran through the record from start to finish. He brought out guitarist Jesse Harris for “First Day of My Life” and singer-songwriter Maria Taylor for “Poison Oak,” clutching a weatherbeaten acoustic guitar that’s clearly worn down over the years. Mortality was a recurring theme across the performance; during “Land Locked Blues,” he altered a lyric to acknowledge that time has indeed passed him by. “The world’s got me dizzy again / You’d think after 46 years, I’d be used to the spin,” he sang of the song he’d originally written at 22.

But as much as time passes, sentiment can often remain the same. The fire that drove Oberst to write “When the President Talks to God” in 2005 came back with a vengeance as Bright Eyes set off “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn,” just after a mid-show reprieve from the Moldy Peaches. Back then, “When the President” was released as a blistering takedown of President George W. Bush that accused him of election fraud and hampering women’s rights. (“Does he ever smell his own bullshit when the President talks to God? I doubt it,” he sang.) The embers reignited for “Digital Ash,” a markedly different show than “I’m Wide Awake” in both presentation and message.

“Digital Ash” leaned into the electronic accoutements of the album, with a pulsating light show and LED screens flashing behind the band. The record has always been looked at as the black sheep of the two albums, the more experimental foray that embraced the coldness of synths on a stylistic side quest. But at the Bowl, it worked — “I’m Wide Awake” was the album that radiated warmth, perfect for a sunset, while “Digital Ash” welcomed the chaos and artificiality of electronic instruments in the dead of night.

The anti-establishment messages gradually took hold. “Tax billionaires until they no longer are,” read the screens at one point, followed by a more succinct message: “Kill trillionaires.” As Bright Eyes played on and Oberst stripped down to a black tank top, a series of panels appeared behind him just as they led into “Light Pollution.” They’re worth their own paragraph:

“The current defenestration of the truth makes it all the more important to speak it. And speak it loudly. Exercising our first amendment rights should never make us the target of our own government. Dissent is imperative in an actual democracy. That is what separates us from authoritarian regimes. So here we go. The Trump family is a criminal organization. They are robbing us blind to enrich themselves and the Epstein class. Arrest them. Benjamin Netanyahu is a genocidal war criminal. Arrest him. Donald Trump is narcissistic psychopath convicted felon known sexual predator and recidivist con artist. He should have never been allowed to run again. He premeditated an attempted coup d’état on January 6 2021 in pursuit of his authoritarian ambitions. Remove him now. The people have the power.”

Clearly, the indictment showed that art can and forever will be a forceful weapon when wielded properly. That’s long been the ethos of Bright Eyes, a band as concerned with matters of the heart as it is with the governments and institutions that write history in real time. At 46, Oberst continues to reckon with the same trials and tribulations that weighed on him 21 years ago, armed with songs as potent and relevant as ever.