Okkervil River

by Pete Aleksa
If you have never heard of Okkervil River here is your chance to learn about this rising band before your friends do. Okkervil River is an up and coming indie-rock/folk band based out of Austin, Texas. The band is composed of songwriter/singer Will Sheff and multi-instrumentalists Howard Draper, Jonathan Meiburg, Travis Nelsen, Zachary Thomas, and Seth Warren. With their new album Black Sheep Boy released in April of this year the band is poised to make major waves and have already garnered critical acclaim, recently receiving a laudatory front page write-up in the New York Times Arts section (ed: I'm not linking, they'd make you pay to read it anyways) while touring with The Decemberists.
The new album begins with a cover of the Tim Hardin song Black Sheep Boy, from which it takes its name, and never looks back, carrying this concept of the Black Sheep Boy throughout the record. Constructed largely of neo-folk ballads, Black Sheep Boy may not be the ideal record to shake one’s ass to. There are however a few cuts that could get the crossed arms crew shuffling their feet, like the up-tempo dark pop pieces “Black” and “The Latest Toughs”. Together, the airy folk and orchestral pop weave a delightful phantasmagoria, blurred together by virtue of the album’s production, in which songs fade out into droning organs and static, and folksy acoustic melodies are underlain with white noise and field recordings.
Throughout the record Will Sheff’s voice quivers with emotion. Most impressive, I found, was Sheff’s performance on “For Real,” a song in which he alternates between the sublime melancholy of The Cure’s Robert Smith and a tortured wail evocative of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst or Neutral Milk’s Jeff Magnum. A style befitting to Sheff’s brand of wordplay. With an emotional tone that channels the existential yearning of Holden Caulfield, the album thrives on dark poetry and elegant prose passages that read like pages ripped from a storybook. In this capacity Sheff proudly displays himself as a champion of the literati. The band for its part orchestrates the songs beautifully. The wide array of instruments featured on the album—including acoustic and electric guitars, drums, bass, pump organ, mandolin, piano, and synthesizer, among others—adds a whole new dimension to the songs. Not to mention the way the band plays for periods of time with such incredible restraint only to burst forth with well-timed flourishes of accompaniment.
Fans of artists such as Bright Eyes, Neil Young, Neutral Milk Hotel, Elliot Smith, The Decembrists, or Iron and Wine are likely to find Okkervil River right up their alley. The band recently finished a slate of shows opening for Earlimart and will be opening for the rapidly rising indie-pop group Rilo Kiley in June; a gig sure to earn the band its share of hipster cred. Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy is released on the indie-rock label Jagjaguwar and I suggest you pick up a copy.

The Fall of Troy

by Pete Aleksa

Hailing from Mukilteo, Washington, The Fall of Troy are a three-piece progressive-hardcore band that sound like the amphetamine-addicted bastard child of a ménage à trois between The Blood Brothers, The Mars Volta and King Crimson.
The trio of Thomas Erak on lead vocals and guitar, Tim Ward on bass and vocals, and Andrew Forsman on drums, had already released an EP, Ghostship Demos, and their full-length debut, the self-titled Fall of Troy (released when the band’s members were only 17) when they signed with the Equal Vision label last year.
The band recently released its second full-length record, Doppelganger, a genre-defying mix of screamo, math-metal, post-hardcore, pop, jazz, experimental rock, and most everything else. In the face of this seemingly chaotic blend of styles the band is able to maintain a delicate balance throughout the album. The resulting record is a collection of brutal breakdowns, melodic hooks, free-jazz spaceouts, and lo-fi ambiance that manages to flow effortlessly despite the wildly complex arrangement of the material; Erak’s frantic vocals and elaborate fretwork adorning Ward and Forsman’s complex rhythms as the songs shift at ADHD speed.
Following the unspoken rule of the semi-pretentious post-hardcore scene that mandates song titles that are bizarre amalgamations of pop-culture laden wit, Doppelganger features songs with titles such as, “We Better Learn to Hotwire A Uterus,” “Macaulay McCulkin,” “Laces Out, Dan!” and “Whacko Jacko Steals the Elephant Man’s Bones,” demonstrating the band has style as well as substance.
Fresh off a recent stint on the Dudestorm Tour opening for label mates Bear vs. Shark and Fear Before the March of Flames, The Fall of Troy have made waves with their energetic live show, a delightful blend of wild onstage freakouts and improvisational jamming. The Fall of Troy are set to hit the road with the likes of The Jonbenet and The Number 12 Looks Like You in the coming months.