Okkervil River

This is the start of a new music-related series, chronicling my top 10 favorite bands as of this moment in history, starting with #10 Okkervil River.   The Austin, Texas, band featuring the amazing Will Sheff on vocals gets the following treatment in Wikipedia:

Formed in 1998, the band takes its name from a short story by Russian author Tatyana Tolstaya. After recording their first album in a garage, they signed with Jagjaguwar. Okkervil River continued by releasing two more albums, including concept album Black Sheep Boy, which landed them critical praise.^[1]

After a period of touring for Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River followed up with The Stage Names. The album sold 10,000 in its opening week in the United States.  The band has garnered positive critical reception. Especially noted are each song's lyrics, intricate instrumentation, and thematic albums.^[2]

Okkervil River will release their next album The Stand Ins on September 9th, 2008.

I absolutely love their sound and the darkness of their lyrics, which still - a couple years after I first heard "For Real" on an Internet blog like this one - chill me with their rawness and power.  Will Sheff is an absolutely brilliant musician, and I was surprised how highly I ranked them when I assembled this list.  This is the newest band in my top 10, and if their upcoming album is as good as their previous efforts, they only have up to go.  Take a listen to a bunch of my favorite tracks after the jump.  And read the lyrics.  A little Stephen King, a little poetry.  A little bit perfect.

Albums

• 2002 Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See - Jagjaguwar
• 2003 Down the River of Golden Dreams - Jagjaguwar
• 2005 Black Sheep Boy - Jagjaguwar
• 2007 The Stage Names - Jagjaguwar
• 2008 The Stand Ins - Jagjaguwar

EPs

• 1998 Bedroom EP – Jound
• 1999 Stars Too Small to Use - Jound
• 2004 Sleep and Wake-Up Songs - Jagjaguwar
• 2005 Black Sheep Boy Appendix - Jagjaguwar
• 2006 Overboard and Down – Inertia, Australia-only tour EP

 

Here's a list of my favorite songs from the band, in order:

1. "For Real" Black Sheep Boy, 4:43, 2005  (#34 of all-time)

Some nights I thirst for real blood, for real knives, for real cries.
And then the flash of steel from real guns in real life really fills my mind.
Then I really miss what really did exist when I held your throat so tight.
And I miss the bus as it swerved from us and almost came crashing to its side.

Some nights the blood from real cuts feels real nice when it's really mine.
And if you want it to be real, come over for one night, and we can really, really climb,
Those blue bridge lights might really burn most bright while we watch that dark lake rise.
And if you really want to see what really matters most to me, just take a real short drive.

Just a drive into the dark stretch, long stretch of night, really stretch this shaking mind.
And this room, unlit, unheated, and the ceiling striped, and the dark black blinds....
I want to know this time if you’re really finally mine.
I need to know that you're not lying, and so I want to see you tried.
And I don't want to hear you say it shouldn’t really be this way, because I like this way just fine.

'Cause there’s nothing quite like the blinding light when that curtain’s cast aside,
And no attempt is made to explain away the things that really, really, really are behind
You can't hide, you can't hide, you can't hide...

2. "Another Radio Song" Black Sheep Boy Appendix, 2005, 5:00 (#59 of all-time)

All that is your beauty oh and all that brings you pleasure.
I could sigh into your heart and say I hope I'm here forever
But Black Sheep Boy with your lovers, with your list of favorite pillows
With your list of missing children, with the wall where you drew windows
Overlooking hidden gardens, cut apart by jagged mountains
Climbing up into the air, crumbling down into a fountain
Where the water waits forever like a quiet distant treasure
When you rise up to recover, when you leave this tiny alley
When you meet me in the garden with your arms all hung with cedar
Every spirit brushing past me, brushing past me in the ether
Scream "All this is window dressing, all you are is flimsy curtains!
Watch you flame up with a word from us, you won't know that you're burning."

3. "A King and Queen" Black Sheep Boy, 2005, 3:25 (#78 of all-time)

If you want to see and be seen, then be seen.
Your dress is dark read and your opening eyes are bright green, make a scene,
But don’t lie on the bed, laid out like you’re dead, because honey, you’re murdering me.

Be a little sheep learning who’ll shear and who’ll feed. The hands come and they leave.
Be hands holding a knife. Be a being on two feet, with his heart trembling, butchering for a king he believes in though he’s never seen.

Be the princess in that stone tower, crying for that handsome butcher’s plight (and, as some princess might, she still calls him a knight.) But the best thing for you would be queen, so be queen. You’re all that I need. Though I know that it never can be, I’d be pleased to post your decrees, to fall at your knees, to name all your streets and to sit down and weep when you’re carried back through them and set down to sleep, and to lie by your side for sublime centuries (until we crumble to dust when we’re crushed by a single sun).

4. "Black" Black Sheep Boy, 2005, 4:34 (#89 of all time)

I’m coming into your town. Night is falling to the ground, but I can still see where you loved yourself before he tore it all down. April 12th, with nobody else around; you were outside the house (where’s your mother?).

When he put you in the car, when he took you down the road. Well I can still see where it was open, the door he slammed closed. It was open, the door he slammed closed. It was open, long ago.

But don’t lose me now, don’t lose me now. Though I know that I’m not useful anyhow, just let me stick around while I tell you, like before, you should say his name the way that he said yours. But you don't want to say his name anymore. Oh, Cynda Moore.

Baby daughter on the road, wrapped up warm in daddy’s coat. Well I can still see the cigarette’s heat. I can’t believe all that you're telling me, what is cutting like the smoke through your teeth as you are telling me “forget it.”

But if I could tear his throat, and spill his blood between my jaws, and erase his name for good, don’t you know that I would? Don't you realize I wouldn’t pause, that I would cut him down with my claws if I could have somehow never let that happen?

Or I’d call, some black midnight, fuck up his new life where they don’t know what he did, tell his brand-new wife and his second kid. And I tell you, like before, that you should wreck his life the way that he wrecked yours, you want no part of his life anymore. Oh Cynda Moore.

Don’t lose me now, let me help you out. Though I know that I can’t help you anyhow, when I watch you I’m proud. When I tell you like before that you should wreck his life the way that he wrecked yours, you want no part of his life anymore. Oh Cynda Moore. And it’ll never be the way it was before, but I wish that you would let me through that door. Let me through that door...

5. "Unless It's Kicks" The Stage Names, 2007, 4:39 (#188 of all-time)

6. "Song About a Star" Down the River of Golden Dreams, 2003, 3:31

• Download Okkervil River - "Song About a Star".mp3
  

7. "Red" Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See, 2002, 3:41

• Download Okkervil River - "Red (live)".mp3

Red is my favorite color, red like your mother’s eyes,
After awhile of crying about how you don’t love her.
She says “I know I don’t deserve supervised sight of her, but each day becomes a blur without my daughter.”

Fall is my favorite season, like falling to reasoning why you crashed from on high. She says “Why is my life so uneven, and what have I done right but given you your life if after I led you on into that bar room?”

“Yes” is my favorite answer. I took a dancer home, she felt so alone. We stayed up all night in the kitchen doing my dishes, on and on until the dawn. She said “I know it’s easy to have me, but I have seen some things that I can’t even tell to my family pictures,” and “I’m full of fictions and fucking addictions” and “I miss my mother.”

She’ll never know I could never forget her. If I could write her a letter, I’d try with every line to say “She still remembers your touch. And I know that it’s not much, but you still haven’t lost her.

8. "No Key No Plan" Black Sheep Boy Appendix, 2005, 3:01

• Download Okkervil River - "No Key No Plan".mp3

9. "Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe" The Stage Names, 2007, 4:25

10. "Westfall" Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See, 2002, 5:55

• Download Okkervil River - "Westfall".mp3

 While noting that "For Real" is not necessarily a song about a murder, Sheff admitted in an interview that "Westfall" is indeed "a straight up murder song."  I think this song can be turned into an amazing story or novel, and when I finish with my current work, I may start on this...

I’m surrounded, each doorway covered by at least twenty men. They’re going to take me and throw me in prison. I ain’t coming back again. When I was younger, handsomer and stronger, I felt like I could do anything. But all of these people making all these faces didn’t seem like my kith and kin.

Colin Kincaid from the twelfth grade, I guess you could say he was my best friend. He lived in a big tall house out on Westfall, where we would hide when the rain rolled in. We went out one night and took a flashlight, out with these two girls Colin knew from Kenwood Christian. One was named Laurie, that’s what the story said next week in The Guardian.

And when I killed her it was so easy that I wanted to kill her again. I got down on both of my knees and….she ain’t coming back again.

Now, with all these cameras focused on my face, you’d think they could see it through my skin. They’re looking for evil, thinking they can trace it, but evil don’t look like anything.  Evil don't look like anything.

11. "Blanket and Crib" Down the River of Golden Dreams, 2003, 2:51

• Download Okkervil River - "Blanket and Crib".mp3

Safe, safe - enjoy your time feeling so safe, and treasure that smile on your face, okay?
Because time will see that it’s replaced in a while.  So go on and smile.
Smile and handshakes all around: that’s your style, and no one would call it denial,
For you’re not even sure what’s in store, though it's more,

Than you’ll be able to take standing up straight and it won’t be okay.
And you won’t be somebody who it’s just happening to,
Because it’s a trap that you, and only you,
Have laid, laid with a towel up over your face,
In your armchair, just lying in wait,
Waiting forces were gathering outside your door.
They sharpened their knives and smiled with no smiles in their eyes,
A little bit larger in size and a little bit hungrier for that tiny prize.

And my mother, she said “Son, remember this, no matter what someone did:
that they once were just a kid at breast  and in bib, in blanket and crib.
So just reach inside yourself and find that part that still needs help,
Find that part in someone else and you’ll do good,”
So I thought that I would.

Hey - I love you, it goes without saying.
I would give you the world on a tray,
Though they are already tracing a line across your throat.
Far too late in the game, you’ll find that you have been betrayed:
Propped up and pushed into your place.
I could claim that it all would go great, but the reason I came
Is to say that it won’t.  You should know that it won't
You should know that it won’t, you should know that it won't,
And so, Phillip, let go.

12. "It Ends With a Fall" Down the River of Golden Dreams, 2003, 3:55

13. "John Allyn Smith Sails" The Stage Names, 2007, 4:33

14.  "The Next Four Months" Black Sheep Boy Appendix, 2005, 3:50

• Download Okkervil River - "The Next Four Months".mp3

Maybe we could break your ankle, clean and unsuspiciously.
An ER trip, a doctor’s slip, and you could share your pills with me.
Won’t it feel so good, though, when we’re lying,
Side by side, can’t move, and I’m not trying?

2000 milligrams each.

A hotel by the pharmacy with drinking straws and toothpaste tubes.
Stash them with your toiletries and I will share my pills with you.
Little Michael sleeping in the child safety seat,
Lying with the windows rolled up, in the August heat.

3000 milligrams each,
4000 milligrams.

We’re driving down the interstate, you’re feeling great, you scratch your wrist,
So we pretend your kids, your husband, all you left does not exist.
And in some motel that night we’re lying,
I can barely whisper, “it’s like dying."

Baby, do you know what I mean?
Well baby, did you hear me?
Well baby, you fell asleep.

I know I’m weak, I won't deny we’ll see our trial sometime soon.
But when I know we’re fucked,
I’ll half the pile and share my pills with you.
Cause we felt fully in our bodies, and we felt totally alive,
So we’re prepared to float above this dirty bed where we both lie.
Where we lie, lie, lie. Will we be fine?
Not this time.

15. "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks" Down the River of Golden Dreams, 2003, 5:11

• Download Okkervil River - "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks".mp3

16. "Love to a Monster" The Stage Names, 2007, 4:55

Lover, now that you've left me, I'm glad you're unlovely.
Because if you could take all the heat in your heart and just hang it from you,
I wouldn't be able to bear the way you cannot love me.
It's much easier of me make a monster out of you.

And so here I go, substituting the glow from your temples,
all our sighs and our trembles, and each last letter sent you
from the cheap little pen of this weak little man
- the one singing - out his jangling, ringing
and hopefully stinging attack upon you.

Yeah, so here I go, just exploding the hope we'll be speaking
Some day, years from now, seeking friendship and understanding.
Yeah, I hope you get angry, and hurt, and have the hardest of landings.
And I hope your new man thinks of me when he sees what a number I did on you.

I grow tired of this song. I turn my eyes to the blonde in the bleachers.
She's a lovely young creature.  I think she's seeking adventure.
I think she's ready to see that the world isn't so sweet or so tender.
I won't break her, just bend her, and make her into my new ringer for you.

I stay in the same comfy town, write the same old songs down, drive the same streets,
Seek the same sense of dull peace, the same sweet words to the chippies.
The same walk by the road where the same muddy snow's finally leaving,

But I'll fight off the spring; I don't want lovely things,
I don't want the earth new.

17. "Black Sheep Boy #4" Black Sheep Boy Appendix, 2005, 5:23

18. "The President's Dead" The President's Dead, 2006, 2:42

19. "The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Conversion" Down the River of Golden Dreams, 2003, 4:25

20. "A Stone" Black Sheep Boy, 5:26

Comments

[LegFuJohnson]

2nd rider tossed from the Tour, and of course, it's music time.

[Bill]

He was a meaningless rider, just like the first. Relax. And yesterday was a rest day. Nothing to write about.

[LegFuFighter]

You really care about the tour? I like the music posts better.

[Ron Rivera]

I absolutely love their sound and the darkness of their lyrics, which still - a couple years after I first heard "For Real" on an Internet blog like this one - chill me with their rawness and power.

[McNulty]

Westfall is based on the real life Yogurt Shop Murders in Austin, Texas.

[LED Flashlight]

Be the princess in that stone tower, crying for that handsome butcher’s plight.