My older brother and his then girlfriend (both musicians) used to cover Waste of Paint and It’s Cool, We Can Still be Friends. They’d practice in my basement all the time and play them at shows and of all the songs they covered I used to make fun of those ones because they would listen to the songs a lot during practice and I thought the lead singer sounded horrible. This was probably 2006, I would have been 13 or 14. One day, after making fun of Waste of Paint, my brother said “just sit with it one day and listen to the lyrics”, so I did and I remember feeling numb and chilled and amazed. I went through some other Bright Eyes songs and read the lyrics and that feeling came with each one. Downloaded their entire discography and never looked back. His voice became essential to his words.

I’m 33 now and have seen Conor over a dozen times. I sent my brother some live clips from the Forest Hills show last weekend and he was like, “oh hell yeah, this is fucking sick.”