Last month, Bright Eyes were in the news for a not-great reason: At a Houston show Conor Oberst left the stage after two songs, leaving the rest of the band to attempt live karaoke with audience members before it became clear that Oberst wasn’t coming back and the venue refunded everyone’s tickets. That’s the kind of thing that might cause late-night talent bookers to rethink their musical-guest commitments, but Bright Eyes still turned up on James Corden’s Late Late Show, and I’m glad they did.

Last month, Bright Eyes started their Companion series, reissuing three of their early albums, complete with a few re-recorded songs, on their new label Dead Oceans. Some of those songs date way back to Conor Oberst’s teenage years, when Bright Eyes was still a one-kid project. At the time, Oberst was still in Commander Venus, an Omaha emo band that also featured future luminaries like Cursive’s Tim Kasher and the Faint’s Todd Fink and Matt Bowen, and his Bright Eyes songs were tracks that didn’t quite fit the Commander Venus sound. Oberst compiled some of those on A Collection Of Songs Written And Recorded 1995-1997, his first Bright Eyes album, and he released it on Saddle Creek in 1998, when he was 17.

The song that Bright Eyes played on Corden was “Falling Out Of Love At This Volume,” one of those teenage rage-out songs from that first album. It’s fun to watch Oberst, older if not necessarily wiser, going back to some urgent quasi-punk bash-it-out shit. Good song, too. It was a little weird to watch James Corden give him a big hug after it was done, but I get the impression that that’s how Corden greets people who he’s met at least once. Watch the performance below.

Bright Eyes’ first three Companion albums are out now on Dead Oceans.