Last month, Omaha folk legends Bright Eyes, who returned in 2020 after a hiatus with Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was, announced that they’d be reissuing their nine studio albums and releasing new songs to add to them. So far, they’ve unveiled “Contrast And Compare” with Waxahatchee, “Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh” with Phoebe Bridgers, “Falling Out Of Love At This Volume,” and they’ve unleashed another Phoebe Bridgers collaboration today with a cover of Elliott Smith’s “St. Ides Heaven” from his classic 1995 eponymous record.
The track is more brazen than the other singles, propelled forward with heavy, electric guitars and Conor Oberst’s angry intonations, harmonized with Bridgers’ ethereal, echoey alto. It’s much more intense than the original, on which Smith strums an acoustic guitar and sings in airy, detached lulls.
Smith is a known influence for both songwriters. In Uproxx’s interview with Bridgers for her 2020 breakout LP Punisher, she said that the title track is “basically Elliott fan-fiction.” She continued: “If we were alive at the same time I think I might have been a little bit of a brutalizer to him, which punisher is a short term for. Just someone who doesn’t know when to stop talking, and might follow you home.”
Listen to the cover above, which comes from Letting Off The Happiness: A Companion.
