Bright Eyes: Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2LP, black & yellow vinyl) [DEAD OCEANS]

Why you'll love it

This Dead Oceans 2LP set spreads the album over four sides of black & yellow vinyl. Rolling Stone ranked it the fourth best album of 2002, and it went on to sell over 340,000 copies in the US.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Black & yellow vinyl

About the album

Conor Oberst was barely into his twenties when this one landed, and it's the record where Bright Eyes stopped being an Omaha secret. Made for Omaha's own Saddle Creek, it's a big, ramshackle, wide-open folk-rock album with a choir, a full band and a songwriter pouring absolutely everything into it.

Mike Mogis is the secret weapon, playing banjo, mandolin, dobro, pedal steel, vibraphone, glockenspiel and hammered dulcimer, while Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett of Rilo Kiley add harmonies. "Method Acting" and "False Advertising" sit next to the tender "Bowl of Oranges," "Lover I Don't Have to Love" became one of his best-known songs, and "Make War" and "Laura Laurent" show how much feeling he could fit into a few chords. It all closes with the sprawling "Let's Not Sh*t Ourselves (To Love and to Be Loved)."

It was the band's first record on the Billboard 200, and they made their national TV debut on Letterman in support of it. The full title runs to fourteen words, so we've stopped trying to fit it on the shelf divider and let the record do the talking.

Also at Kops: more Bright Eyes on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Dead Oceans / Saddle Creek (cat# DOC286LP), a reissue of the 2002 album.