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For myself and most Bright Eyes’ (@brighteyesband) fans, Conor Oberst began making music just as we started to venture from under our parent’s wing. Bright Eyes was the band that ushered in countless angry kids’ sad, reflective periods of adolescence and, more recently, showed those kids the glories of roots and folk music.

Due to Oberst’s young age when he started making music, the trajectory of his projects feel like someone growing up and trying on different identities until suddenly, one fits. His music has evolved from maudlin, goopy sadness to hilariously overwrought anger and finally, to muted self-reflection laced with beautiful and quintessentially American sounds. On the seventh, and apparently last, Bright Eyes album, Oberst continues to try on new styles, settling with a mix between the plucky depression of Lifted and the electro-pop-rock of Digital Ash, Digital Urn. It may be regressing into old tendencies, but it is still at least vaguely new.

Oberst starts off The People’s Key in the same way as his masterwork Cassadaga: with someone talking about some form of spirituality. This time, however, instead of “communing with the dead”, we get a man who babbles about lizard people. The similarities to previous releases stop there with no traces of the fiddles and pedal steel guitars that made Cassadaga and I’m Wide Awake its Morning so memorable. In their stead are old fashioned electric guitars and some electronic manipulation.

The songs range from the quite rickety music box sound of earlier Bright Eyes records such as the beautiful “Ladder Song” to a loud and almost Desperacitos feel on songs like “Halie Salassie.” It’s definitely a change for Oberst, who has spent the last five years releasing almost exclusively Gram Parsons inspired American roots music, and while he pulls off the new material well, it doesn’t seem to fit his song writing style as well as the roots music of the past.

It is commendable to change styles and experiment with new musical genres, especially as often and well as Oberst does. Not all artists are able to keep such a strong voice while still trying on different hats, and it is truly an accomplishment. The People’s Key is definitely a departure from the style that came to define the band in the last part of the decade, which seemed to fit their aesthetic flawlessly. While it is a shame that Oberst seems done with the roots flavor that was so attuned to his songwriting ability, a departure is a natural form of his evolution as an artist.  The People’s Key, however, doesn’t feel as much like a true evolution. Instead, it is a regression and mosaic into the styles that have worked before. It is a transition record, not a final statement on a band so many have loved for so long.