Bright Eyes are recording the follow up to 2002’s ‘LIFTED OR THE STORY IS IN THE SOIL, KEEP YOUR EAR TO THE GROUND’.
Frontman Conor Oberest told NME.COM he’s been working on the new release, already titled, ‘I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning’, in Nebraska and Atlanta, Georgia with long time producer Mike Mogis.
“We have a lot of songs recorded,” he said. “It’s not going to come out ‘til January so we’re going to finish in the summer. Mike, who runs the studio in Nebraska, his girlfriend’s having a baby in June so were waiting for that to happen and then [we’ll] finish the records after that.”
Oberest says he has 25 songs prepped for the effort, including ‘Old Soul Song’, ‘Another Travellin’ Song’ and ‘Road to Joy’, which he recently performed at California’s Coachella festival at the beginning of the month. The frontman says he has so much material, he’s currently mulling over releasing it by genre.
“A lot of the songs are more traditional folk, country sounding stuff, and then we have some other stuff with like two drummers — more beat oriented, more grooves, not necessarily dancey but just [stuff that has] a good beat to it,” he said. “It’s kind of weird. I don’t know if we’re going to put it all out in one release or sort of split it up.”