Consumer Guide Album

Bright Eyes: Kids Table [Dead Oceans, 2025]
Omaha-born Conor Oberst has manned over a dozen bands since he released his debut at 13, but I can't verify how many share the kind of NYC locale that makes me feel at home with this oddly tuneful eight-track EP, which begins "I wish I had a ship that sailed the waters/Wish I had about a hundred dollars" and goes on to name-check Candace Bergen, Salman Rushdie, Guy Fawkes, and others I bet I missed—the "Portuguese construction guy" who falls to his death, for instance, goes unnamed. Also crammed into the track listing is one that cites "union scabs singing songs for pacifists," another that goes "When the blue of the night meets the bruise around your eye" a "dyslexic palindrome" that may or may not go "A man, a plan, a canal, napalm," and one called "It Always Feels Good and It Never Hurts," an instrumental that nevertheless turns up online with a lyric that reads in its entirety "Heroin." B+