Review: Bright Eyes - Five Dice, All Threes

Even though Five Dice, All Threes is a solid effort from Bright Eyes, it also doesn’t really offer anything you haven’t heard before.

In 2020, Bright Eyes marked the end of a nine-year hiatus by releasing their tenth album, Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was. Since getting the band back together, they’ve resumed touring, which has had its ups and downs, mostly due to lead singer-songwriter’s Conor Oberst’s erratic behavior. Somewhat ominously, the album’s official announcement states “at times throughout Five Dice, All Threes, you may feel worried” for Oberst.

On the other hand, that same announcement said “Five Dice, All Threes may be the most fun album in the Bright Eyes catalog,” and Oberst himself described it as “lighter” and “a bit more fun.” As it turns out, the album is both a worrying and fun listen at the same time.

Now, this contrast isn’t new for Bright Eyes. While the band is best known for melodramatic tracks that revel in emo excess, they’ve trended towards making bouncy songs that contain deceptively dark lyrics – see “Mariana Trench” from their last album. Five Dice, All Threes kicks this off with the single “Bells and Whistles,” an upbeat folk rock song that opens with the line “I was cruel like a president, it was wrong, but I ordered it, lost some limbs in an accident playing God.” I’ll admit finding it a little generic at first, but eventually its infectious melody (complete with Andrew Bird-tier whistling) won me over. Sure, its lyrics are a bit all over the place, but lines like “Expensive seats in a field of dreams, U-turns in limousines” are oddly thought provoking.

Elsewhere, the galloping pace of “El Capitan” is very similar to “Another Travelin Song” from 2005’s I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, only this time the acoustic strumming is filled with sardonic lines like “So they’re burning you an effigy? Well, that happens to me all the time!” The song also has a great horn outro courtesy of the band’s multi-instrumentalist Nate Walcott. “Trains Still Run on Time” sounds even cheerier, with the most pop-oriented synthesizer line since the band’s 2011 album The People’s Key. This belies that it’s the most political song on the album, where Oberst laments the current state of the U.S. and its media while noting “nobody bats an eye, ‘cause the trains still run on time.” The simple acoustic strumming that begins “Real Feel 105°” quickly expands into a full backing band with synthesizer and plentiful mandolin, recalling the lushness 2007’s Cassadaga. It’s a pretty song, but contains the most lovelorn lyrics Oberst has written in quite some time, telling the object of his affection “you’re all that I dream of now.”

Occasionally, the “worrying about Oberst” aspect of the lyrics really comes to the fore. As the band’s lead guitarist/assorted stringed instrument player Mike Mogis lays down some pedal steel on “Bas Jan Alder,” Oberst plainly observes, “I never thought I’d see 45. How is it that I’m still alive?” You might miss this moment of existential realization as it’s in the midst of a country-rock song, but this is less the case on the much more downcast “Tiny Suicides.” On what is easily the most emotional track on the album, Oberst asks “am I gonna die or beat back all these tiny suicides?” and his voice cracks as he sings “maybe I could have you one last time.” It’s the rawest Oberst has sounded since his dark and hastily-compiled solo album Ruminations. Just in case you think the album can’t get bleaker than this, indie rock’s king of brooding lyrics, Matt Berninger of the National, appears on “The Time I Have Left.” In case you couldn’t tell from the title, the chorus of the song is just “I would like to ask you the time I have left.” While the attitude is a fit for Bright Eyes, the song’s piano and ending “sha-la-la-la” shouts make it sound a little more like a National track.

As you can tell, lyrics play a significant role in what makes a Bright Eyes album memorable, and unfortunately, Five Dice, All Threes falls flat here more than usual. The track “All Threes” brings in fellow indie singer-songwriter Cat Power to sing a duet with Oberst, and it has a strong lounge feel with its muted drumming and piano melody. That said, as much as I appreciate the song’s image of Oberst offing Elon Musk in an alleyway, its chorus of “you were beautiful before, until you weren’t” is anticlimactic. The song “Hate” seems like it’s meant to act as the album’s lyrical centerpiece, as Oberst rattles off everything he loathes about both organized religion and fame over minimal instrumentation. While it might be jarring to hear him list every single religious figure he hates (I mean does he really hate Vishnu?), it’s something he’s done more eloquently before (see: “The Bible’s blind, the Torah’s deaf, the Quran’s mute” on 2007’s “Four Winds”), so it’s not exactly a hot take. It’s only at the song’s end when he sings “I hate the protest singer staring at me in the mirror, there’s nothing left worth fighting for, hasn’t that come clear?” that things actually get interesting.

Lastly, “Rainbow Overpass” is the most radio-friendly track on the album, and I don’t blame the band for promoting it as as single. It also has a guest verse from Alex Orange Drink (Alex Zarou Levine, the singer of the So So Glos), who co-wrote most of the songs on the album. However, it’s chorus is just “I’m not slowing down, I’m speeding up,” and it’s one of the few Bright Eyes songs that’s truly just mindless fun.

Even though Five Dice, All Threes is a solid effort from Bright Eyes, it also doesn’t really offer anything you haven’t heard before. Fans who were turned off by the grand-scale production of Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was will appreciate its relative simplicity, but Five Dice is still a bigger show than the Bright Eyes of the 2000s. It does feature some very good songs that easily earn repeated listens, but there’s just as many you likely won’t revisit. Add this together, and Five Dice, All Threes is a middle-of-the-pack Bright Eyes album that will neither be anyone’s favorite, nor their least-liked.