Okkervil River

nice!

Also, someone asked me to make a representative CD80 and it's really tough! This is the best I could manage

https://open.spotify.com/user/suckerblues/playlist/4i8gfO0gt8LEFXnFlkpBpY?si=vTvBNF7mTXiC32Rfvxc_aw

Can't think of another band that can turn me both on and off as hard as OR

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/19/602258666/first-listen-okkervil-river-in-the-rainbow-rain

I just realized both this record and the new Manics explicitly reference Caitlin Thomas

nice coincidence, i listened to away yesterday during a very long commute. that could be a favorite album of all time for me in a few years. i can think of very few records that approach it in mood and ambition (the great american music club records come to mind and not much else).
i also kinda think van morrison should cover at least half of it

Halfway through the new one and it's gonna take a bunch of listens to sort out whether the sonic pivot works or not. the Blue Nile influence is definitely palpable and "Love Somebody" even evokes the 1975 a bit, but I don't think I like Sheff writing in this deliberately broader lyrical mode. "Pulled up the Ribbon" has grown on me a lot though, their best single in a long time.

Album definitely feels like work in away that Away never did. Also a classic case of "songs don't justify their length" syndrome

yeah it's a really weird record. I liked a few tracks on first contact but like with Silver Gymnasium Sheff seems to be chasing down a set of ideas that don't play to his strengths

otm and otm

can one of you journalists call Will and ask how he cleared the Kinks riff?

Sheff's "inspirations" playlist for this record features "Let's Go Out Tonight" which is not a huge surprise but unfortunately there's just a little too much going on for full-on Blue Nile worship

― Simon H., Tuesday, April 17, 2018 11:29 AM (two days ago

*clicks furiously*

which Kinks riff?

k3vin the BN influence is only really felt on maybe 3-4 tracks, fair warning

haha I am an okkervil fan at baseline so it's not strictly necessary, was just making an in character post

The 'Waterloo Sunset' riff is in the new song.

xp

"Famous Tracheotomies" is great, not least because while it references "Waterloo Sunset" structurally it most resembles "Celluloid Heroes."

https://www.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/8hov84/hi_im_will_sheff_frontperson_for_the_band/

I've been so out of the Okkervil loop for the last ten+ years that I didn't even know so many albums had come out, but I decided to give the latest one a spin and it's quite nice. Never thought I'd say that in 2018.

The new one has its moments but, as discussed upthread, Away is a bit of a secret masterpiece.

I really like "love somebody"

^ Yeah, that's the one that really stuck out for me.

great song, he talks a bit about it here https://uproxx.com/music/okkervil-river-interview-in-the-rainbow-rain-love-somebody-video/

album's a grower too, Sheff's such a humanist (reminds me of DFW, less mathematically rational, more spiritual)

yeah he seems like a good dude for sure

New monthly live series and request tour this summer, one album per month. I actually really appreciate that it's a digital-only affair (there are too many boutique vinyl releases these days), even if the whole thing is a little steep for me.

First release has a gorgeous, glacial "For Real"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuI3rA0Odls

apropos of nothing, "The President's Dead" plays *very* differently these days. Try it!

Just saw that Travis Nelsen, Okkervil's drummer from Black Sheep Boy to The Stand Ins, has passed.

I wish I had more to contribute on the subject, but I'll just add that his drumming on Black Sheep Boy is a perfect complement to the high dramatics of the album, and he was very fun to watch live.

oh man that sucks. I've been playing "black sheep boy #4" a ton lately

basically every song those sessions produced is incredible, Sheff and co. were on fire and Brian Beattie's production work was remarkable. I'm shocked he didn't become a go-to studio magician after that.

new Sheff solo on the way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph-zatqd8Go

single sounds like an album track, not bad

sounds like an Okkervil River record to me
https://willsheff.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-special

3 listens in, very good

When this snuck out I didn't read any press around it so I didn't think about it possibly presaging the end of Okkervil River and that he would be going out as a solo artist going forward. Of course he wrote a song called "RIP Okkervil River" but then went and released another album under that name. Well this interview certainly seems to suggest that Okkervil River is indeed no more:

https://www.stereogum.com/2201956/will-sheff-after-okkervil/interviews/qa/

that's a v good interview, thx!

Sheff is more invested in interrogating why Okkervil River was able to thrive, not in spite of its occasionally vengeful and violent music, but because of it. Specifically, whether they helped reinforce what Sheff describes as “the Harry Potter narrative,” in which we’re all misunderstood wizards stuffed in the Cupboard Under the Stairs, waiting for our magical capacities to be discovered. There certainly was a revenge-of-the-nerds element to mid-aughts indie culture, from TV to film to Black Sheep Boy itself, which generated comparisons to contemporaries like Bright Eyes, the Decemberists, the National and Arcade Fire — feverishly literary groups armed with seriously uncool instruments that cloaked their darker undertones with an invigorating, us-against-the-world mentality. Sheff worries about “the men out there who feel like the world stiffed them, that they’re owed something,” extrapolating this mindset to a kind of “fascism of superhero movies.” “I started to see my preoccupation with jealousy and what I felt my work deserved.”

"For Real" is def a song that grabbed my attention back then, but now my favorite record is Away, and that's more or less solo Sheff, so not too concerned with the band name

New album is v good, hightlights include title track and In The Thick of It

this is sad:

he estimates that he’ll end his East and West coast tours approximately $5-7,000 in the red. He expects to lose double that going to Europe