Sit at the Kids Table. Go to prom. Try a new SSRI. Deface a mural. Flip the mattress. Help a bird. Dissociate. Last vacation.

These landmark occasions are inscribed on the board-game-inspired cover of the new Bright Eyes EP, Kids Table.  And therein lies the chiaroscuro of Bright Eyes’ music, perpetually teetering between rogue optimism and pragmatic despair.  Following the band’s 2024 visceral and hook-filled Five Dice, All Threes, the new EP exists as both a partner-in-crime to that album, and a self-contained world all of its own.

While many of these new songs emerged from the same recording sessions at Omaha’s ARC Studios as Five Dice, they didn’t all quite fit the concise cohesion of that album.  So it was always the plan of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott to find another seat for these outliers at the proverbial kids table, “eaten off the ironing board like we did at our big family holidays,” jokes Oberst, in a nod to the EP’s cover art.