Something is missing from the title I Am Very Far. Maybe it’s a “from”, as if Okkervil River have a destination in mind. Or maybe it’s an “away”, as if they’ve left something behind. To hear Will Sheff talk recently, you’d think it’d be the second option, since he tried to “push [his] brain to places it didn’t want to go” while writing and recording this record. Listening to the record, though, this hardly sounds like just someone escaping old habits. It has a purpose, a propulsion to it, though it never leads to the places you’d expect. Instead, I Am Very Far is stuck fascinatingly between the from and the away, and stretches itself out to bask in all the spaces in between.
It doesn’t take long to recognise this as the departure Sheff and the band intended it to be. If 2005’s Black Sheep Boy blew the band‘s sound up into something darkly cinematic, I Am Very Far crumbles most of the band’s sonic trademarks, crushing them under the hefty foot of a whole new approach. Gone are the folk and alt-country vibes of early records like Down the River of Golden Dreams. Gone, too, or severely altered, is the rock bombast of their past two albums.
- Okkervil River’s ‘Black Sheep Boy’ Is Still Brilliant at 20
- Okkervil River’s ‘In the Rainbow Rain’ Feels Like a Musical Renewal for Will Sheff
- Okkervil River: Away
- Okkervil River: The Silver Gymnasium
- Okkervil River: The Stand Ins
- Okkervil River: The Stage Names
- Okkervil River: The Presidents Dead
- Okkervil River: Black Sheep Boy