For three days in a row, he has been sleeping just two hours a night. This year was meant to be a comeback of sorts — right now, he should be on tour for the first Bright Eyes record in nearly a decade. Though all three members of the influential aughts indie-rock band have collaborated over the years , Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was was billed as a reunion. The new album had been in the works for years, and there were plans for promotion and touring.
COVID wiped all that out. The record almost got lost as well. After spending the initial months of the pandemic in his adopted home of Los Angeles, Oberst drove back to Omaha to see his family and check on his house. Being home felt nice, he says, especially reuniting with the two dogs he shares with his ex-wife, Corina Figueroa Escamilla. The pandemic prompted the shutdown of the local bar he co-owns, Pageturners.
Just a few years ago, a Bright Eyes reunion was not a given. In , Oberst was hospitalized during a tour that followed a nearly career-ending rape accusation the accuser later recanted. The next year, he released Ruminations , a solo album made up of some of the grimmest music of his career. On Down in the Weeds, everyone contributed musical ideas and fleshed them out together. Bright Eyes albums are defined by their bigness — big feelings, big sounds, big screams.
That bigness, how Bright Eyes songs make you feel, comes from Mogis and Walcott. Down in the Weeds is another big Bright Eyes album. Regardless of the frontman's former wealth, there's one quite possible reason he's not shelling out the big bucks for New York City rent anymore. In , Oberst fell prey to a strange and harmful online post. As reported by the Washington Post , the multi-instrumentalist's reputation took a serious blow in late when an anonymous woman claimed in the comments of an online article that Oberst had raped her.
The online post soon went viral online, and eventually spread to mainstream news. Oberst at the Durham, NC show she claimed was the location of the alleged sexual assault," Oberst's team said in a statement that year, with the internet left debating over whether the artist was guilty or not. Five months after the post had gone virtual, Oberst sued the anonymous woman who had since deleted her post for libel.
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