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Bright Eyes open 21st-anniversary run by playing ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’ and ‘Digital Ash in a Digital Urn’ in full at Red Rocks
Bright Eyes opened their 21st-anniversary run at Red Rocks with full performances of I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn.
Bright Eyes marked the 21st anniversary of I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn with a set built around both albums in full at Red Rocks in Colorado. The show on Tuesday, May 12, launched the first of three anniversary dates the band has planned, each built around the same basic idea: revisit the sixth and seventh Bright Eyes records, then fold in a few extra favorites from elsewhere in the catalogue.
They began with I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, played straight through in chronological order, with Conor Oberst and company moving from At the Bottom of Everything to We Are Nowhere and It’s Now, Old Soul Song (for the New World Order), Lua, Train Under Water and the rest without much ceremony. The decision to present the record as a complete sequence, rather than cherry-picking the obvious singles, gave the opening stretch a certain archival weight. It was less about nostalgia as a mood than about treating the album as a fixed object, still intact 21 years on.
Zoom in on Mike soaking it all in by u/zemogKA in brighteyes
After a break, Bright Eyes brought out indie musician Ben Kweller for a set before returning to tackle Digital Ash in a Digital Urn in full. That portion of the night carried the biggest pull for longtime listeners, especially because several songs had not surfaced in years. Time Code, Devil In The Details, Ship In A Bottle and Theme From Piñata were all played live for the first time in two decades, while Arc of Time (Time Code) returned for the first time since 2011. Elsewhere, more regularly trotted-out tracks like Down in a Rabbit Hole and Hit the Switch helped anchor the second half without making it feel like a museum piece.
The encore shifted gears again, opening with an instrumental version of America the Beautiful that came with a projected anti-ICE message behind the band. The text was blunt: “ICE is now Trump’s private paramilitary,” it read. “It is now the most well-funded law enforcement agency in American history. Its officers routinely terrorise our friends and neighbors, disappearing innocent people, clad in masks, driving unmarked cars, murdering its own citizens.”
Another section continued: “ICE should be abolished immediately and their officers should be prosecuted for their crimes. The arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. Trans rights are human rights… America is indeed beautiful when we make it the real home of the brave.”
Bright Eyes then closed the night with Lover I Don’t Have to Love, Make a Plan to Love Me and Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and to Be Loved), with Ben Kweller joining them again for the finish.
America the Beautiful screens 5/12 by u/phoy44 in brighteyes
The full setlist underscored how tightly Bright Eyes framed the evening around those two albums, while still leaving room for a few later-era surprises. I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning ran from At the Bottom of Everything through Road to Joy, with Emma Ogier appearing on Land Locked Blues. Digital Ash in a Digital Urn followed with Time Code through Easy/Lucky/Free, including the first live outings in years for Devil in the Details, Ship in a Bottle, Light Pollution and Theme from Piñata.
Bright Eyes will continue the anniversary run at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on May 23, with The Moldy Peaches supporting, before heading to Forest Hills Stadium in New York on June 6 with Built To Spill. The dates sit inside a busy stretch for the band that has also included some offstage oddities: last year, Conor Oberst appeared at his own lookalike contest in Omaha and handed the winner a bag of his clothes.
The anniversary shows follow 2024’s Five Dice, All Threes, an album that arrived to critical acclaim and featured collaborations with Cat Power, The National’s Matt Berninger and the So So Glos’ Alex Orange Drink. Speaking to NME around its release, Oberst described a shift in mood and method: “This time, I still hope the songs resonate and have equal amounts of meaning, but as far as the sounds and approach to the music, it’s a bit lighter.” He added, “The word ‘fun’ is very rarely used to describe my band, but maybe it is a bit more fun,” before pointing out that, compared with the previous tour’s 14-piece lineup of strings and horns, the new record would be “just guitars; rock and roll stuff.”
