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Okkervil River
O kkervil River frontman Will Sheff doesn't like to rest on his laurels for long. The band's most recent album, the acclaimed 'The Stage Names' only came out last August, but they're already back in the studio. "We're doing something that's sort of like 'The Stage Names Appendix'," he explains, "sort of like what we did for 'Black Sheep Boy'."
Originally the record was earmarked as a double album, before the decision was made to cut it back to just nine tracks. Nonetheless, the album was hailed as the band's most accomplished work: a character-based exploration of pop music, its effects on people, and the place it holds in their lives. As a whole, it worked particularly well. But, notes Sheff, the leftover songs are "still banging around", and he's still "proud of them."
"I can't really wait to put them on the next record, because they have so much to do with 'The Stage Names' that it just doesn't seem like they'd fit," he says. "It's things in the sound - things we were trying to do sonically with 'The Stage Names'. These songs fit in that sort of world. It's going to be a sort of companion piece to that album, and there's actually as many songs as we put on the record."
"In my mind," Sheff adds, "I pictured 'The Stage Names' having a wider scope than it did in the end. There was a lot more to it. But when you're taking a double album of material and trimming it down, you have to sacrifice a lot of that. This is my attempt to bring a lot of that back in. There were more characters, more situations. Things that echoed what was on 'The Stage Names'. There was a central quality to some of the characters that got downplayed when we cut it down."
Not that he'd ever really intended it as a concept album - or that he even believes it is. "I just kinda go and feel around, and see what feels neat. I didn't sit down and say, 'Oh, it's going to be thematic and character based'," Sheff shrugs, "it just kinda happened. But I really do like it when there's a continuity across the record."
"Or even like a meal, where you'll have the same ingredient featured in a few dishes on the menu. There's a coherence to that, and it makes it feel like a whole. You don't have every colour in the rainbow on a painting; you have a palette. And so with what we've done in the past, I have tried to think of some kind of palette in terms of what we're doing and what we're not doing, with the music and the writing and that kind of stuff. Because the end product is more harmonious and aesthetically pleasing, you know?"
'The Stage Names Appendix' will, in fact, be the second release since the album: Okkervil River posted the 'Golden Opportunities Mixtape' up on their website for free just before the end of the year. The nine track EP, comprised of eight covers and an original, came as something of a surprise to fans, who had no idea of its existence prior to its December 12th release date. Which, reveals Sheff, was pretty much the point.
"What was so much fun about it was that no one knew it was coming," he grins. "I think having our record leaked last year was a bit of a shocking experience, and there's so much machination within the music industry - it gets frightening at times, and it was so nice to know that you could just put something out, and give it to people for free."
The tracks - including covers of tracks by Joni Mitchell, John Cale, and a translation of Gainsbourg's Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais by Sheff himself - were recorded from various radio and TV appearances around the time of 'The Stage Names'' release.
"I was being put in the position where I was doing all these appearances. I thought, 'Wouldn't it be nice if all of these things were being secretly put together?', and so we assembled it as a...Volton-style super robot further down the line," Sheff laughs. "Every time I would have to do one of those things, I'd try to put something that I thought could fit in the final puzzle. Then when it came time to put it out, I picked all the things that worked in an order that seemed like fun, and that was that."
Alistair Wallis
Okkervil River appear at the Laneway Festival on Sat 23 Feb.
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