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.
― brechtian social distancing (Simon H.), Sunday, 12 April 2020 02:54 (four years ago) link
oh man that sucks. I've been playing "black sheep boy #4" a ton lately
― k3vin k., Sunday, 12 April 2020 03:03 (four years ago) link
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.
― brechtian social distancing (Simon H.), Sunday, 12 April 2020 03:18 (four years ago) link
new Sheff solo on the way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph-zatqd8Go
single sounds like an album track, not bad
― corrs unplugged, Monday, 15 August 2022 13:53 (one year ago) link
sounds like an Okkervil River record to mehttps://willsheff.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-special
3 listens in, very good
― corrs unplugged, Tuesday, 18 October 2022 08:48 (one year ago) link
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/
― lord of the rongs (anagram), Monday, 19 December 2022 13:38 (one year ago) link
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
― corrs unplugged, Monday, 19 December 2022 14:48 (one year ago) link