Okkervil River - I Am Very Far

Over the last decade Will Sheff and his bandmates in Okkervil River have developed a specific brand of depraved roots rock that has borrowed from traditional rock, gothic Americana, and folk music.

As a young band Okkervil River unleashed a set of ramshackle and driving songs, lyrically fueled by a preoccupation with literary tragedy, revulsion, and obsession. In Sheff’s songs, it’s something of a challenge to find a protagonist unconcerned with self loathing or anger. This is not to say that their lyrics are merely bastions of depressed navel gazing, but that Sheff is mining the same warped anecdotes as have always occurred in the tradition of American folk music.

In their early years Okkervil River pushed these lyrical interests ever onward with a unique bombast created by the intersection of youthful energy, frustration and talent. This propulsive energy was always part of the band’s charm. If they were done wrong, they weren’t going to slink into a corner to mope, they were going to spit it back in someone’s face. Hell, they brought a certain amount of punk energy to folk music.

As the band developed they began to expand their sound without loosing any of their identity. The began to explore more complex arrangements and further orchestration. And now we have I Am Very Far, an incredibly precise and conscious album that lets the band explore their some of their strangest proclivities within traditional rock song structures.

In opener ‘The Valley’ Shiff sings of the ‘valley of the rock and roll dead’ with a tension and fury that somehow seems restrained and wry. Sheff sounds like a visitor in the valley, hoping it won’t become his home. The song begins with a stomp that seems surprisingly direct for the band, and is just the beginning of a rather complex album.

‘The Valley’ is followed up with a soft, slow song ‘Piratess’ which further belies the albums restraint. In this song and ‘Lay of the Last Survivor’ Sheff lets the orchestration truly breathe and uses his voice like an old school crooner. Despite the tonal differences in their voices, Sheff seems to utilize influences from Roy Orbison to Scott Walker much more than on previous albums.

If the productions details have escaped the listener by this point, they become impossible to ignore by ‘Rider.’ The album’s third song comes to a seeming conclusion, wrapped in a cello that seems cribbed from moments of Sgt. Pepper’s before devolving into quick mess of guitar and kick drum that threatens to spiral up into the sky and disappear.

The multiple tracking of Sheff’s vocals on ‘White Shadow Waltz’ and occasional staccato snare break, coupled with the knocking-around-a-junkyard bridge, further highlight the album’s deliberate construction. Although these elements blend together to form an incredible song, it’s hard not to miss the some of the sloppier moments of Don’t Fall in Love With Everyone You See or Black Sheep Boy.

Although the album lacks such slacker anthems as ‘Our Life is Not a Movie, or Maybe’ or ‘For Real,’ this album has a stand out all its own: its production. Never has Okkervil River’s production been so deliberate but nuanced, complex and yet far from overbearing. At times the band employs unexpected cascade of strings in ‘We Need a Myth’ and at times they include a bout of weird guitar squiggles and feedback that would sound at home on any Radiohead album. But none of these stranger choices seem like unnecessary experiments, Okkervil River have learned how to use the studio to augment their songwriting not mask it. I hope I am not overstating when I say it’s quite possible that I Am Very Far may well be Will Scheff’s Pet Sounds, a current capstone of songwriting and expanded instrumentation.

Needless to say this is Okkervil River’s most mature work to date. Yet, it’s easy to lament some of the band’s more restrained impulses. Somehow in the last decade Okkervil River have managed to tamp down their youthful rage to a constrained and tempered fury. The band has certainly strengthened their chops over the years, but rarely do they ever cut loose like they’ve done before. Luckily, we still have those albums to return when the mood strikes us.