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Okkervil RiverBlack Sheep Boy Jagjaguwar/Low Transit Industries Bless you, Lenin Simos. The first time I listened to this album it didn't grab me. Nor the second time. Now, however, it's a contender for my favourite album of 2005 - and it's all because my fellow dB Magazine writer made me listen to it again after asking "Hey, why aren't you reviewing this one? I'd have thought it was exactly your sort of thing." And now, after a month of daily play, it most certainly is. Or perhaps I'm now its sort of thing. The album begins with an understated strum through Tim Hardin's Black Sheep Boy before singer/songwriter Will Sheff takes on the song's mantle as his own, becoming the Black Sheep Boy/Man that crops up in almost all of the subsequent songs. It's not quite a concept album but there are definitely themes, lyrically and musically, that weave through the record. Sheff uses the Black Sheep Boy both as metaphor and as a genuine character as he tells a story of love, loss and redemption, from the agenda-setting curtain-up of track two For Real through to the subdued coda A Glow. To describe it as "alt-country" is perhaps misleading, although fans of Clem Snide or Wilco would find a lot to love here. There are moments of jaunty, Pernice Brothers-esque country (Song Of Our So Called Friend), and one can almost imagine Lambchop's Kurt Wagner croaking though A Glow in place of Sheff's cracking tenor (which at times sounds almost like Robert Smith, truth be told). However, if you're holding the CD in your hand and wondering whether you can trust a review before you spend thirty hard-earned dollars, take it to the friendly person behind the counter and ask to hear track eight, the triumphant, desperate, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink pop majesty of The Latest Toughs. It's probably the most immediate thing on the album, although the slow-burning So Come Back, I Am Waiting is another masterpiece, as is the jaunty Black. Strings, mandolins, keys and brass nestle against guitars, bass and drums while Sheff also gets a lot of mileage out of the sheep metaphor, with a flock of rams and lambs roaming through the songs. It's a grower of an album, and it's not to everyone's taste - heck, it wasn't to my taste first-up either - but if you're prepared to live with it a while you'll discover something genuinely special. After all, Leni wouldn't lie to you.  |
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