Bright Eyes’ new album starts with whistling, but Conor Oberst is hardly care-free. On their latest album, Five Dice, All Threes, a lucky roll to be sure, Oberst continues to use his fortuitous platform to relate to the down-and-out, writing a five minute song about what he hates (called appropriately “Hate,”) which includes Puritans, David Koresh, and even Buddha, dealing with life’s “Tiny Suicides” and the “worst temptation” he feels out on a building’s ledge, as well as the irony that “Trains Still Run On Time” in America, when the country seems designed for mass hysteria.

As always, the songwriting is top notch. He even sings about being approached by a friend or fan—“and then you came along / wanted help with a song / want a peak through the curtains”—something any songwriter familiar with Oberst’s impressive work would jump at. And this album holds up with his and the boys’ previous work. All 13 songs contain Bright Eyes’ intelligent and catchy DNA, unspooling like a ladder which you can climb out of the depths to the mount of “El Capitan.”

That’s the power of Oberst’s work, that he goes down in order to go up, singing, like his forbearers Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, (who he reminds me of a number of times on the record), about the truth as he sees it and saying the quiet part out loud. “I hate this twisted logic / This sadistic hallelujah.” His music is cathartic, makes sense of most humans’ self-awareness, favors the hard worker: “Bells and whistles / Cheap thrills cost a lot.” It champions the scrappy ones, dealing with life’s challenges with honesty and heart: “Jesus died / in a cage fight,” is how he puts it on the song “All Threes” with artist friend, Cat Power.

The National’s Matt Berninger also contributes a verse on “The Time I Have Left,” a slow piano ballad that plays on the idea of asking someone for the time while actually contemplating his mortality. He’s still a relatively young man, but he’s lived a rough and ragged life on tour and in the media for years, so that the fabric seems to be fraying. But he seems to still find purpose in enduing other people’s lives with purpose. “Well it takes a lot of nerve / To live on planet earth / It was the best of times / It was the worst of times / It was the best.”

“Soldier on / tin soldier boy,” he ends the album on the New Orleans’ horn-laden last track. Like many of Oberst and Bright Eyes’ other albums, this album digs its heals deep in the dirt and plays tug of war with your heart. Another great album.

Pre-order Five Dice, All Threes HERE