Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy Appendix EP
By: Tyler Watson | Category: Album Reviews | 01/09/06 | 10:58 AM
 |  |  Grade: A+ | Genre: Alt-Country
Summary: Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy is in everybody's top ten list for 2005, but the EP they released this November seems destined to be a collector's item.
Since I'm a Texan, I'm biased towards any music that comes out of my state. So I love it when I hear music that allows me to speak in absolutes like "Stevie Ray Vaughan is the best guitar player ever" and "Chamillionaire is the best rapper alive". Both of those statements are 100% true, and so is this one: Black Sheep Boy Appendix is the best EP you will ever hear. I feel comfortable making that statement because I don't think many of you are going to go on EP-buying sprees to prove me wrong. Oh yeah, and because it's absolutely amazing. |
When I describe Austin, TX's Okkervil River to those pitiful Texans who haven't heard them (I don't have any friends outside of the state), the words I use are "cathartic" and "rollicking". Every song they've made (even the instrumental interludes) is like a successful therapy session. You feel like you've learned something vital, and you get emotional.
Will Sheff's voice can go from collected to cracking to howling in the space of one song, and it usually does. He's one of few singers today that has a truly great voice. Not great in the conventional sense (he has his fair share of off-key moments), but great like it has genuine feeling behind it. When he gets really into it and yells during the songs, you want to know what he's going through. At the same time, the band keeps the songs on solid ground with tremendous work on the organ, keys and one helluva tight rhythm section. The best thing to compare them to is a train -- a train that's hauling ass. The faster songs chug along like a train made of woolly mammoths, and the slower ones lose none of that power. They sound like that last train moving at a more leisurely pace. The best song on Black Sheep Boy Appendix peg that feeling is "No Key, No Plan" (which, incidentally, is my favorite song on here). It also perfectly showcases the power of Sheff's voice. You will sing along. It's impossible to avoid.
But what kind of music is Okkervil River, exactly? Well, they've been clumped into the alt-country genre. Alt-country basically means bands that do rock music with above-average Americana influence and come from south of the Mason-Dixon. This is a genre that people like me, who avoid country, feel a natural aversion to. Fortunately, there isn't much of a similarity in sound between country and alt-country. Alt-country bands are usually astoundingly good (Okkervil River, Old 97's, Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Mountain Goats). They also tend to have male singers with really impressive pipes. Out of the whole set of alt-country bands and musicians, Will Sheff has the best voice (second is My Morning Jacket's Jim James), and Okkervil River is the best band. The music from all these bands ranges from wild songs that would be perfect for a bar to the almost painfully beautiful songs that you have to hear on headphones. So if you're like me and country music makes you want to ralph, get past it and listen to these alt-country bands. If you already do, you know what I'm talking about when I say Okkervil River is the best. Now go and save this EP from obscurity!
Release Date: November 22, 2005
|
