July 18, 2023

at the “bright eyes” arena open air, not only were many people present, there were also an unbelievable number of different feelings at the start.

it was a sultry, oppressive, somewhat arduous summer evening, but we still hiked to the open air area of ​​the arena wien full of anticipation. Finally it should be time, finally “bright eyes“ see, and then also in such a beautiful ambience. but before we were allowed to cheer bright eyes singer conor oberst, we were first allowed to hear the opening act “penelope isles“ give our attention. the indie pop group cut a good figure on stage, but by then we were all thinking regarding the main act of the evening. how it is.

a little later the time had come: conor obst not only came on stage with his band, but also a string and brass ensemble entered the stage parquet. “bright eyes“ was always in combination with classical musicians from the local scene during this tour – what a nice surprise! a surprise was also conor oberst, whom i remembered as strange, but not to that extent. but maybe that was just his stage persona, maybe his slight confusion was just an act? I didn’t know, and I wasn’t necessarily bothered by it. I even felt very picked up and entertained because of his funny movements and the passion he put into his singing.

Admittedly, my knowledge of Bright Eyes songs is a bit limited, but I still found the setlist to be good throughout. even if my favorite song “shell games” was unfortunately not played. but there were a lot of other highlights: right from the start the strings and horns made a positive impression, because they brought so much more depth to the songs! but it was also nice to watch conor playing the piano – despite the falling drink. his guitar playing was rousing, but even more rousing was his urge to move, several times he fell to the ground, mostly intentionally, but once unintentionally when he fell down.

I still didn’t think anything of it, but my partner eventually whispered to me that bright eyes mastermind conor must be completely drunk. his short announcements, which mightn’t have been sadder (he talked regarding some deceased people in his life), didn’t exactly point to a healthy condition. i tried to interpret the signs and slowly my feeling of amusement turned into a feeling of pity – was he really that bad?

Song by song passed, eventually we ended up with the encore and the hit everyone had been waiting for: “first day of my life”. the performance was – at least for me – extremely emotional, also because i kept thinking, what if this was his very last performance and we just didn’t do anything to help him? i let my partner’s concern really infect me and at the end, when the last notes of “one for you, one for me” rang out from the speakers, i was torn: part of me felt the whole thing from this drunken singer Insanely well entertained for the whole evening, the other part was just horrified that I was only able to enjoy a spark and didn’t burst into tears of pity.

i was finally able to find peace with myself and was just happy to have taken part in this concert evening. who knows if he will find his way to vienna once more so quickly, who knows what will happen in the future. in the here and now life is the motto and in this sense, i really liked the concert, despite the circumstances.