One of the cardinal rules of writing is never throw anything out. Even your sloppiest drafts or roughest sentences could, with time and consideration, shed their obtuse angles and blossom. This also tends to requires a critical edit and multiple passes. Sometimes the draft will never see daylight. Of course, it also helps if you have something to say that's (hopefully) worth saying.
For most of Conor Oberst’s career with Bright Eyes, he's reliably had something to say. And for much of that career, I would eat it up. Nobody captured the ache and aspirations, the despair and tempered optimism of chaotic youth quite like Oberst during Bright Eyes' heyday. Almost every album from "Fevers & Mirrors" through "Cassadaga" has a memory attached, at least for me. They're past-tense snapshots travelling to the present bearing memories of lost teenage years and young adulthood. Throughout those albums it always seemed that Oberst, about a decade older than me, had some bit of advice, or a unique perspective on how to suffer and survive.
It's with that in mind that we come to his most recent release, quietly birthed into the world last September. After roughly three decades, the “Kids Table” EP might be the first time I've genuinely wondered whether Oberst had anything much left to say.
Of course, that assessment may be a bit harsh. This is essentially a B-sides compilation from Bright Eyes' 2024 LP, “Five Dice, All Threes,” that clocks in at less than 30 minutes spread across eight tracks, including a short interlude. Its wildly inconsistent and slapped-together feeling could be explained away by virtue of these tracks being cutting floor takes. That could be the case, but I gotta say, some of these songs are genuinely awful.
Before we get to that though, let's run through what the album does well. The title track opens the EP and it's a straight up banger, insomuch as any Bright Eyes song can be. It manages to skillfully transition from spaghetti western piano and synths into an enjoyable duet with Hurray for the Riff Raff’s infinitely listenable Alynda Segarra. The track hearkens back to Cassadaga-era Bright Eyes with its swagger and a triumphant chorus. The entirety of this release’s aspirations can be found in this song as it explores nostalgia and aging while providing the best original lyrics. It lasts just long enough to remind everyone that Oberst is still capable of writing great music.
There's also a nice cover of Lucinda William’s ‘Sharp Cutting Wings (Song To A Poet),’ and a competently enjoyable and surprisingly optimistic closer found in ‘Victory City.’ Unfortunately, that's about all this EP gets right.
Everything else on this release runs the gauntlet from self-indulgent navel gazing to borderline unlistenable.
Immediately after the opener, we're treated to ‘Cairns (When Your Heart Belongs To Everyone)’ which, while musically showcasing classic Bright Eyes instrumentals, quickly devolves into Oberst dripping on about how hard it is to care too much about everyone and everything. It's the musical equivalent of proclaiming your greatest weakness is working too hard during a job interview.
This underwhelming humblebrag slides into a hacky ska song with “1st World Blues” which ostensibly is about living under crumbling capitalism. The wheels really come off when he starts listing off big box stores you’ll find in any major American mall. I understand what he’s doing, but hearing him rhyme “crazy” with “Old Navy” or “despondent” with “Hot Topic” really knocks me out of the song. That’s all before he starts singing about getting good grades on a report card.
However, the worst offenders on this EP are yet to come. They include ‘Dyslexic Palindrome’ of which even the title sounds like a bad joke plucked from a Youtube comments section. The lyrics are supposedly also about living under dystopian capitalism, but present more as word salad. Not even Segarra’s second cameo of the EP can salvage the track.
That lyrical problem carries over to ‘Shakespeare In A Nutshell’ which is hands down the worst track on here, and a strong contender for the worst Bright Eyes song I can recall. Somewhere between the grating vocal effects and meandering, plodding synths that dribble into confusing dissonance and noodling flourishes, Oberst manages to say a whole lot of nothing. Bright Eyes fans are no stranger to cryptic lyrics, but in better-built albums there’s at least a unifying thread stringing together the disparate verses. Here the lyrical cohesion struggles to stretch beyond the stanza.
This is probably my least favorite offering I’ve heard from Bright Eyes, and it pains me to type that since Bright Eyes is a band whose music means so much to me. Even “Five Dice, All Threes” despite its brutally pessimistic atmosphere felt reasonably cohesive and frankly a bit frightening. Aside from ‘Kids Table’ and ‘Victory City’ which bookend this release, the rest of the originals on "Kids Table" feel under-developed or unnecessary. While I’m sure there are better songs contained within the seeds of these cuts, Bright Eyes chose to push them out in an underwhelming EP rather than refine the songs. Hopefully this misfire merely marks a lull in creativity and quality control, and not a sign of things to come.
