Even given there have been two Noel solo albums and two Beady Eye albums to contend with in that time, that's a lot.
The concert included almost everything from the dazzling new Bright Eyes album, "Lifted: Or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground" (Saddle Creek).
The generous two-hour set moved between the new Bright Eyes album and songs dating back to the '90s, filling out the old home-recorded arrangements with the capabilities of a six-member band.
The album, easily Mr. Oberst's least personal work, wasn't his first engagement with American roots music; Emmylou Harris lent guest vocals to three songs on the 2005 Bright Eyes album "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning".
I Can See Through You routes the emotional cruelty of the Cat's Eyes album via a bad acid trip, taunting: "No one remembers your name, no one tries".
The latest Bright Eyes album, "Lifted, or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground" (Saddle Creek), grapples with, among other things, the distance between life and art, honesty and artifice.
Now the experiment is revisited, this time as a Big Eyes album, with even more adventurous, often sprawling arrangements, and now involving a series of other singers and collaborators.
Roberts unveiled the track as the second single on her website, declaring "it's very different to Beat Of My Drum" because it was important to show multiple sides to the Cinderella's Eyes album.
On recent Bright Eyes albums, including its new one, "The People's Key" (Saddle Creek), Mr. Oberst's songs are less diaristic than they once were.
Since then, he has put out a series of Bright Eyes albums and singles, each more verbose (and better produced) than the last; unlike most child prodigies, he's still getting better, a decade after he began.
