Okkervil River – The Silver Gymnasium

Okkervil River’s Will Sheff has, for a while now, been one of the most potent lyricists around, applying a literary craft to deconstruct and question the often mundane reality behind rock and roll mythology. While doing this, he has not sounded a happy chappy. His vocals have often veered towards manic yelps, spit-flecking the mic like Conor Oberst in a tin-foil hat while the rest of the band rattles along with a similar jagged intensity.

While ‘The Silver Gymnasium’ retains some of the melancholy and shadow of the band’s previous efforts, in revisiting his childhood in the small New Hampshire town of Meriden in the mid-80s, Sheff seems to channel some of the optimism and energy of his youth in the delivery here. As he recognises in ‘Pink Slips’ one of the album highlights, ‘only happy ‘til the age of ten is still a gift’.

The nostalgia evidenced in the album’s lyrics, with its references to Ataris, VHS and taping your favourite song from the radio only for it to cut out at the end, also shines through in the production by John Agnello, whose credits include John Cougar Mellencamp and Cyndi Lauper. This is, however, unfortunately one of the downfalls of the record. Whereas previously there had been enough rough edges to complement the raw, and occasionally borderline unhinged, vocal delivery, now the newly polished sound makes this the most uninspiring album, musically, in the band’s catalogue.

It seems a shame that, while far from being a bad album, ‘The Silver Gymnasium’ lacks some of whatever it was that made previous albums like ‘Black Sheep Boy’ and ‘The Stage Names’ so special.