Video: Bright Eyes, ‘Mariana Trench’

on
0
Bright Eyes (Photo by Danny Cohen)

With Monday’s release of their fourth single of 2020, Bright Eyes have that their new album “Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was” will be out Aug. 21 via Dead Oceans.

The album will be the ninth (excluding the 2002 Christmas album) and first since 2011 from the core trio of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. Described as the most collaborative Bright Eyes album to date, “Down in the Weeds” started from just one demo and was written during sessions in Omaha and at Walcott’s L.A. home. “Our history and our friendship, and my trust level with them, is so complete and deep,” Oberst said of the writing process. “And I wanted it to feel as much like a three-headed monster as possible.” The album recorded at Omaha’s ARC Studios and in Los Angeles (at Electro-Vox and Capitol Studios) with a rhythm section of drummer Jon Theodore and bassist Flea.

On Monday night, they performed their latest single “Mariana Trench” on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” with Oberst, Mogis and Walcott joined by Theodore, bassist Anna Butterss, horn players Josh Johnson, Vikram Devasthali and Sean Billings and Lucius (Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig) on backing vocals.

As for the song itself, it’s vintage Bright Eyes: “A coward is / What a coward does / I suppose maybe I always was / But I’m sick of it / I’ve had enough / And now I’m ready for the war,” Oberst sings.

The video for the latest single is the work of Art Camp, who says: “The production of the video started at the beginning of quarantine and finished as people came back out of their homes and took to the streets together. In 18 different bedrooms across the world, listening to Bright Eyes, keeping each other company, we got the chance to collaborate on a story about embracing and celebrating change. The animation is composed of 2,200 hand-illustrated ink paintings based on original 3D animation and archival footage. We hope it makes you excited to imagine that everything could be new.”

||| Watch: The video for “Mariana Trench”

||| Also: Stream “One and Done” and “Forced Convalescence”

||| Previously: “Persona Non Grata”