Okkervill River - I Am Very Far

Okkervil River - Led by frontman/songwriter Will Sheff, Austin, TX indie folk/rockers return with their first album since 2008's The Stand Ins -- something NPR is calling "a beautiful mess"...Sheff is one of our more interesting and boundary-pushing songwriters, so if the attention to pristine production detail might be lacking -- Sheff handled that himself -- the album makes up for it in sheer stylistic, arty/indie individualist chutzpah // Release: I Am Very Far (May 10, Jagjaguwar) // Sounds like: a careening, angular and often jarring attitude raises awareness from the get-go that the friendlier confines of the past have been jettisoned in favor of something completely different...is it a waltz? a jig? a boogaloo? Does it really matter? // Quote: "The goal was to push my brain to places it didn't want to go. The idea was to not have any idea – to keep myself confused about what I was doing. I produced it myself so that I could extend the songwriting process all the way through to the very last second of recording, so the songs would never really stop changing." // What we like: what some may call cheeky and over the top, we chime in (off beat and out of tune) "go for it"...rarely has an album simply dared you to like it, warts and all, raucous clatter melding into warbley crooning into jumbles of lyrical imagery loosely tied to a tigers' tail...This is scribbled large in ALL CAPS and bright, bold, psychedelic-colored strokes...

Okkervil River - "Lay of the Last Survivor" (from the album I Am Very Far)

Okkervil - "Wake and Be Fine" (from the album I Am Very Far)