Okkervil River - The Silver Gymnasium

Despite Okkervil River’s Will Sheff best intention, New Hampshire is not New Jersey, and the adolescent angst of white, upper-middle class upbringing does little to threaten Springsteen’s blue collar dread of becoming another trapped soul in the industrial machine.

With The Silver Gymnasium, Sheff steers his band down a nostalgic path, peppering their sound with an equally nostalgic arrangement that becomes more Beaver Brown Band than E Street when the whole thing wraps up.

Yes, Okkervil River’s seventh album is their first disappointing one. It’s a big statement about his childhood in the small New Hampshire village of Meriden, a town of nothing more than 300 residents and a boarding school where his parents taught.

Kimball Union Academy is a private institution where parents can fork over around $50,000 a year for the privilege of sending their kids to a remote New Hampshire village. And while I’m very familiar with the pain and pleasures of small town living, I am also acutely aware how time has the tendency to magnify both of them.

For Sheff, he offers very little in the way of The Silver Gymnasium to demonstrate how Meriden is a worthy enough environment to warrant 49 minutes of its listener’s attention. For all of New Hampshire’s well documented physical beauty, Sheff focuses his attention on the obvious relics that were shared by anyone growing up in the 80’s. We get the prerequisite mentions of Walkmans and Atari consoles, but barely a compelling reason of why this, of all topics, deserves to be the inspiration for another Okkervil River concept album. He even admits so much on “Pink Slips,” “This wish just to go back/When I know I wasn’t ever ever happy/Show me my best memory/It’s probably super crappy.”

Even with this admission, Sheff continues with an endless parade of prose that seems more of the product of his own pretentious need to appear literal. I mean, what the fuck would a ten year old kid be doing with studying the label of a bottle Miller High Life anyway? But somehow the “Champagne of Beers” gets a pop culture nod right next to Michael Jackson cassettes in another bounce between one of The Silver Gymnasium’s supposed eras of inspiration and the product of Sheff’s own English major that enabled him to take such creative liberties with his own memories.

Musically, The Silver Gymnasium offers a bit more in the way of production values and new approaches in the band’s arrangement that I’m not exactly sure are the result of producer John Agnello or Sheff’s own desire to make a very appropriate facsimile of the time period he’s reflecting on. Whoever instigated such a design-with the record’s inclusion of dated synthesizers and cheesy Clarence Clemons saxophones-they should have noticed that one of Okkervil River’s strengths in previous albums was how vital their shoestring budgets were in making their songs sound so epic.

With the shoestring budget apparently gone, the grandiose moments now sound contrived while Sheff’s own voice losing much of its unique character as well. It has now become another soulless instrument, always staying within the same range, always projecting the same level of sadness to the point where you’re exhausted from the endless barrage of mope by the end of the record.

Tellingly, Sheff has commissioned an 8-bit video game as part of the promotional push behind The Silver Gymnasium, in an effort to somehow make his nostalgic musings seem more legitimate. Having taken a spin through the game’s primitive graphics, I can tell you that it’s just as boring as any other 8-bit game as you’ll remember. It’s also a perfect symbolic metaphor of practically all of my complaints with the record itself.

These time capsule memories and romantic notions of Sheff’s childhood may have indeed meant the world to him, but that doesn’t mean that they are universal enough to carry the same kind of emotional weight for the rest of us.

After all, there’s a reason why the Atari 2600 is still collecting dust in your parent’s attic.

RokyErickson & Okkervil River - True Love Cast Out All Evil

The greatest praise that I can give to the first Roky Erickson album in fifteen years is that if you listen to it without an inclination of the man, his past, and his inner demons, you’ll find it to be a worthy collection of alt-country originals that’s pleasing to the ear and comforting to the soul.

Of course, for those of you that know about the man, his past, and those inner demons, True Love Cast Out All Evil becomes that much more of an impressive achievement. If you’ve ever seen the documentary on Erickson, You're Gonna Miss Me, the new record may even come as a relief, the first record that finally finds him at peace with himself.

I saw that film last year, and it’s heartbreaking. So much that I had ultimately wrote him off as a casualty, incapable of delivering a new, meaningful album that would come close to his former glory.

When I heard the first song off of True Love Cast Out All Evil from a few months ago-a collaboration with the members of Okkervil River-I was shocked. It was an effort of such clarity that I wondered if it was more the result of Okkervil River’s leader Will Sheff own efforts than of Roky’s input. Sheff seems like the kind of caretaker that would do whatever it takes in making sure that a new Roky album doesn’t embarrass the man or the catalog.

Now that I’ve heard True Love Cast Out All Evil in its entirety, I can say that while Sheff and the rest of Okkervil River certainly have worked hard to deliver what may be the best album of Erickson’s solo career, it’s majesty wouldn’t have happened if not for Roky’s own desire to give us at least one last album of uncluttered greatness.

Because we’ve heard his lysergic-fueled, Lone Star declarations and we’ve heard his post-traumatic terrors. What we really haven’t heard is Roky himself.
Until now. True Love is an intensely personal album with incredible depth and emotion. While Erikson digs deeps and pulls out words that routinely alternate between resentment and resilience, Okkervil River rise to the challenge by delivering beauty and brutality as needed.

By the end of the vitriolic “John Lawman,” the arrangement is a wreck of feedback, squalling trumpets and other sounds of clatters. It segues into a weird bit of an old radio performance where Roky sounds a bit aloof while the announcer tries to corral some continuity from the disjointed guest. Finally, a firmly plucked electric guitar matches wits with a gentle slide guitar for the title track, where Roky delivers a vocal performance that’s the epitome of redemption.

There are moments like this throughout the album, and actually, the record itself is essentially a song-cycle of Erickson’s life. It’s not what you’d call an easy listen, but that’s probably what impresses me the most. True Love isn’t sugarcoated and it sounds like a natural collaboration between Sheff and Erickson. Sheff has picked out the appropriate songs in Roky’s catalog to paint a vivid picture of Erikson’s life since being incarcerated at the Rusk Maximum Security Prison for the Criminally Insane until more recently when Roky was finally provided with the kind of care that not only allows him to function, but also create. Ultimately, Roky’s own voice provides the color throughout the album.

In between the reinterpretations are actual archival recording-some even originating during his incarceration-which gives True Love an almost visual quality. And like life itself, sometimes what you see isn’t pretty, but the way in which Erickson and Okkervil River mix their colors together, True Love Cast Out All Evil is a beautiful portrait of the man.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Okkervil River - The Stand Ins

I got a chance to see Okkervil River last year during the tour for The Stage Names. It was in a dingy club and there may have been a little over than a hundred patrons there that evening.
“We’re starting off with our best foot forward, ladies and gentlemen.”
And with that proclamation, Will Sheff led the band off into a great rendition of “Plus Ones.” Throughout the evening Sheff strummed away on a ratty acoustic guitar and looked every bit the tortured artist that The Stage Names and its more recent companion album The Stand Ins lyrically alludes to.
Those in attendance dutifully sang along and, I must confess, it was one of the most profound live shows that I had seen in a long time.
But Sheff himself sees something else in this participation. Since he’s a major part of the band’s creative process, he knows the ratio of truth-to-bullshit. While he could easily parlay the public affection into enhancing his ego, he dismantles it. On “Pop Lie,” one of several songs on The Stand Ins that goes out of its way to dismantle the very idea of hero worship, Sheff admits that everything is “calculated to make you sing along” and, because he lied when creating it, “you’re lying when you sing along.”
Knowing this now, does it make my own experience less profound? Not really. Rock itself is built upon lies, exaggerations and bullshit. Did you really think that Willie Dixon, a balding black man topping the scales over a deuce-and-a-half, really slept with all those women he wrote about?
In addition to alluding to his own art of deception, Sheff chooses two subjects, porn actress Savannah and glam-rocker Jobriath, as key illustrations. “Starry Stairs” documents the adult film star’s decent into depression, a condition that would eventually cause her to take her own life. The idea of that industry’s illusion is notorious, so Sheff takes a regular routine most actors in the business must succumb to…an AIDS test…before they are allowed on the set. “They asked for blood/What do you think this woman’s made of?/I stuck a small, thin pin in my thumb/They dropped a low, long line to be crossed/And I crossed it.” His eye for detail, focusing on this requirement of truth before allowing the star to essentially lie on camera, is what makes these character studies so effective.
“Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On The Roof Of The Chelsea Hotel 1979” shows the man, better known as Jobriath, at the bottom of his career. Five years prior, Jobriath’s picture was plastered on Times Square. By 1979, Campbell was singing cabaret songs in New York City, living paycheck to paycheck and finding happiness in a few drinks and a few intimate encounters.
“Fuck long hours/Sick with singing/Singing the same old songs/In the bar” he laments, considering the days…still vivid in his memory…when the record company advance was still lining his pockets. After being groomed to become the next David Bowie, Jobriath was unceremoniously dropped by his label and played to continually diminishing returns until he passed in 1983. While Morrissey has notoriously championed Jobriath’s credibility as an unsung hero while Sheff champions the performer after he’s fallen; the moment when he’s no longer part of a marketing lie, yet the truth of his reality has him longing for the return of that untruth.
Musically, The Stand Ins handles all of this melodrama and detailed narrative with the same painstaking arrangements. Pianos, horns, bells, banjos, organs…all are used to fastidious effect. This may be Will Sheff’s story arc, but it’s the band that allows all the drama to work.
The Stand Ins is billed as part two of last year’s The Stage Names and, according to accounts, is the remnants of that album as it was originally intended to be a double-disc set. Okkervil River wisely voted against that idea, as well as a simultaneous release schedule. While the latest is not as jaw dropping as the latter…we’re now accustomed to the idea that this band can produce greatness…its nearly as flawless. To be fair, Stage Names may have a slight edge on the sheer number of splendid songs (three of Stand Ins eleven tracks are merely instrumental interludes) and there isn’t one track here that’s as awesome as “A Girl In Port” or “Plus Ones.”
But The Stand Ins does possess a better sense of continuity and just because it falls a few eyelashes shy of the previous album does not discount the fact that it is a major piece of work. And because both albums are of such remarkable caliber, it should place Okkervil River as one of America’s most vital bands performing today.
Even if Will Sheff is pulling our leg every step of the way.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Okkervil River - Live Review

Before Okkervil River’s set at The Picador in Iowa City Saturday night, the band (including opener Damien Jurado) set up their wares at a make-shift merchandise area towards the back of the club. The merch table was actually a bar where you normally place your beer if there wasn’t a bunch of people trying to sell their shit.
So amid the copies of vinyl copies of The Stage Names, a drunken patron and her equally drunk boyfriend became deep in conversation with, of all people, the sound guy for Okkervil River. She raised her thin frame up on to the bar precariously close to open cups of draft beer and limited edition vinyl; I knew immediately what was going to happen. For some reason, the sound guy didn’t ponder the disastrous results that could occur and he soon became “the guy that didn’t ask the drunk chick to get down from the bar before she spilled beer on the records.” When she finally knocked over her draft, it was while explaining to the sound guy that Iowa had the “largest per capita population” of something.
I think I’ve been around conversations like that, so I’m fairly sure the population being discussed was “cows.”
Welcome to Iowa!
There were a lot more drunk people at the Okkervil River show, mainly boys, and most them looked like English majors. These well-read kids know a good pensmith when they hear one, and based on the number of thrift store cardigans in attendance, there’s a little hero worship going on too. They began screaming out songtitles as their literary mentor climbed on stage from the nearly sold out crowd and then matched him, word for word, throughout the entire performance, often challenging the lead singer in terms of sheer volume.
Will took off his glasses and called the room to order.
“Let’s start with our best foot forward.” He said, launching the band’s set with the awesome “Plus Ones.”
The band, looking like studiously coiffed and bearded Ragstock models, often utilized more than one instrument during the songs and they played musical chairs on The Picador’s relatively small stage just to complete the right arrangements.
Sheff relayed a story about the venue’s infamously precarious backstage stairs which nearly “killed” him during a load out a few years ago along with another story from that same night which had him dropping trou during the band’s set for reasons never fully explained. Sheff kept his pants up throughout the performance on Saturday, and he sported a fetching Johnny Marr-just-slept-in looking haircut which was a hit among the ladies up front.
No wonder the guys with dates kept a tight grip on their ladies: this Will Sheff dude could totally steal some hearts if he wasn’t such a pussy.
They’ve upgrade The Picador since Okkervil River last played there: the back stairs aren’t as treacherous and you can cram another few people in without the fire marshal being called. The Okkervil River audience has upgraded in numbers as well; they’re a band on the verge of moving beyond their “midlevel” status (“Unless It Kicks”) and reaching recognition much larger than this 150 capacity room could handle in the future. It’s nice to be able to see a band with such larger expectations in a venue like this, particularly how they interact with such an intimate audience, knowing that the show tomorrow is in a room that holds five times more people.
They reacted with an intensity that is both heartfelt and loose: every heavy-handing expression that Sheff made seemed sincere and drunk enough while every solo and cold ending the band delivered seemed perfectly road-tested. The intimacy may have prompted a few more bottles of Grain Belt between them and, as a result, a few more sloppy fills, but it was perfect for a high-humidity room that was heavily infiltrated by people with lots of Grain Belt already in them too.
They used a set list that will become perfected in the next few weeks before it starts to lose that unpredictable element. There’s still a sense that Will and the band could caterwaul out of control at any moment, but after a few more weeks of seeing how much impact The Stage Names has made, you’ll probably notice the theatrics and posturing come to an end, replaced completely by repetitive professionalism.
But today, they’re still the beer drinking buddies, those hopelessly romantic bookworms that front a band on the verge of becoming something much bigger.

Setlist:

Plus Ones
Black
Lady Liberty
Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe
Unless It Kicks
A Hand To Take Hold At The Scene
Red
Song Of Our So Called Friend
For Real
All The Latest Toughs
No Key No Plan
Girl In Port
Westfall
Encore:
Don’t Know Much
The President’s Dead
Last Love Song For Now