Okkervil River – I Am Very Far
Jagjaguwar
Self-pity is a wormy badge of honour passed among smug indie rock ambassadors. With breakthrough LP The Stage Names, Okkervil River promptly banished the wound-licking stereotype and brandished a wry and rare lyrical bite, scarcely bettered by any brooding bellyacher before or since.
Four years on, fresh from propping up Roky Erickson’s True Love Cast Out All Evil — during which the unintelligible psych pioneer was duly tamed by mainman Will Sheff (and befriended into the bargain) — they return with a spectacular romp of purely theatrical stock. And while the quintet has never lacked for identity, the wilting Thirteenth Floor Elevators mastermind’s charmingly schizoid otherness has seemingly inspired something of a spiritual overhaul in his fellow Austinites. I Am Very Far is a suavely volatile minefield, far and away their brashest, boldest, most brazenly chaotic venture to date.
Where The Stage Names and its companion The Stand Ins saw Sheff flaunting his postmodern nous — ‘A Hand to Take Hold of This Scene’ pondered the existential implications of stumbling upon one’s own music on TV shows, while ‘Pop Lie’ lambasted “the liar who lied in his pop song” over their catchiest composition yet — the beaten-down and browbeaten society depicted in I Am Very Far is careening towards oblivion. Or at least, has convinced itself it is. Though Sheff’s literate, poetic verse is sharp as ever, it’s perhaps his journalistic forays which inform the fractured, multi-POV documentary style adopted here. From the swashbuckling waltz of apocalyptic newsflash ‘Wake and Be Fine’ (“Everybody’s crashing, running, calling out the coming of things they kind of can see”), to the brain-rattling orchestral grind of ‘The Valley’ (“We were thrashing in the clatter of the rock’n’roll hung”) and the stately major-key ascension of crowning glory ‘We Need a Myth’ (“With the truth closing in, I must insist, we need a myth”), the black sheep boy of yore finds himself emphatically skewered by four dead-eyed horsemen.
While some might argue that Okkervil River are the last band in need of a melodramatic revamp (I count seven mentions of the ‘throat’ here, two of which are slit, another scraped by air, while ‘Your Past Life as a Blast’’s merely “looks like a crime”) it suits that one of indie rock’s most underrated and flamboyant lexical choreographers should be matched by such a wilfully monumental musical backdrop. It goes without saying that, with the stage fully set, now ought to be Okkervil’s time to step into the spotlight. Jazz Monroe
