I’m off work this week doing my annual spiritual
recharge. Today has been a good and restful one, starting with a whole bunch of
French Open tennis, a nap with my cat and now a music review.
All of this is designed to try to keep my mind
off not only work, but also the stress of the Stanley Cup finals. My beloved
Bruins play the St. Louis Blues in Game 4 tonight.
Disc 1267 is… Don’t Fall In Love With Everyone You See
Artist:
Okkervil River
Year of Release: 2002
What’s up with the
Cover?
The world’s scariest one-man band. One-man band dudes are a bit weird to begin
with, but I think Bird Skull here takes the title. I wonder what he keeps in
that mini armoire? I’m going to go with squirrel bones.
How I Came to Know
It: I’ve
known Okkervil River for years, but I didn’t really know this album at all.
Then I saw it for sale used at a local record shop and decided to give it a
chance.
How It Stacks Up: I have nine Okkervil River albums, which is
all of their full-length efforts. Of those nine, I rank “Don’t Fall In Love
With Everyone You See” somewhere around #5 through #7. Since I’m not one to
equivocate, I’ll go with…7.
Ratings: 3 stars
“Don’t Fall in Love With Everyone You See” is
Okkervil River’s debut full length LP and it sounds like it: full of fresh
promise and raw energy and the occasional roughness around the edges of a band
still evolving. Okkervil River are still finding their path, but the overgrown
trail is worth the walk.
Bands are always evolving, and this is more
true of Okkervil River than most. In the past eight years or so they have
adopted a much lusher and electronically friendly sound. I like their new
sound, but like any hipster wannabee, I also hold their early sound close to my
heart.
“Don’t Fall in Love…” is a more organic record
than recent listeners will expect, with a lot of acoustic guitar strumming, but
the harbingers of what they would become are already here. There is a bit of
horn or cello here and there creating an orchestral feel throughout that tells
you this is only ever going to be part folk music, and that’s just how
the band likes it.
The one continuous element to the band is the
singing and songwriting of Will Sheff, who at this early stage already demonstrates
a knack for both melodic composition and some complicated arrangements that never
trip over one another. That said there are moments (“Lady Liberty”)
comes to mind where there is a bit too much banging and crashing going on. It works
and doesn’t technically get in its own way, but it was still a bit frantic near
the end for my tastes.
I also regret the decision to have guest
singer Daniel Johnston sing part of “Happy Hearts.” Sheff’s vocals can
tend toward a pitchy warble, but they are an acquired taste, that once acquired
work perfectly with these oddball folk-pop ballads. Daniel Johnston sounds
strained and scratchy. Knowing the rough-edged production on this one track is deliberate
didn’t help any either. It frustrated me because this should have been one of
the album’s better tracks, and I would love to hear it re-recorded in their
modern polished style. Maybe at a live show…
When it all lands right, “Don’t Fall in Love…”
has magical moments. The opening track “Red” is a gut-wrencher, opening
with:
“Red is my favourite colour, red
like your mother’s
Eyes after a while of crying
about how you don’t love her.”
This song and “My Bad Days” both had an
insistent emotional twist to their melodies that reminded me favourably of early
seventies Leonard Cohen. It is high praise and while the lyrics aren’t at the
same consistent level, the band lands the same torture and hurt in their
delivery.
The record’s standout track is “Westfall”
a troubling crime ballad tracing a psychopath’s journey from youth, through
adolescence and murder. Like many great murder ballads, Sheff worms his way
inside the psyche of the killer and forces you to see the world through his
eyes. The song ends with the ominous line as the killer faces the cameras of
the courtroom:
“They’re looking for evil,
thinking they can trace it
But evil don’t look like anything.”
According to Wikipedia (which is never wrong)
Sheff was inspired to write the song about a specific murder. I won’t mention
which one, since the song was recorded in 2002 and the convictions have since
been overturned. The crime is now an unsolved cold case. In any event, none of the
names in the song match either killers or victims, which is just as well. In
the end, the song is a fiction and a damned creepy one at that.
“Westfall” is the best effort on a
record that takes you on an many explorations of the dark recesses of the human
heart (albeit not all quite so deadly). The record will haunt you at times, but
you’ll enjoy the journey.
Best tracks: Red, Westfall, Okkervil River
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