OKKERVIL RIVER
The Stage Names
(Jagjaguwar)
1/2
After five full-lengths and some nine years of steady plugging
along, who would’ve thought a little success would go to Will Sheff’s
head? And yet, following the success that Sheff’s Okkervil River has
enjoyed since the release of their New York
Times–lauded, Lou Reed–approved Black Sheep
Boy, Sheff has mustered the confidence to indulge virtually every
fat-headed cliché of the newly successful rock musician, as
evidenced in every corner of his band’s latest, The Stage
Names.
Firstly, as the title suggests, the premise of most of The Stage
Names lingers around tales of contemporary performers, and as
such, there’s a healthy dose of the unfortunate “rock band writing
about being in a rock band” predicament—a classic lyrical
stalemate that very few musicians seem to be able to enliven with any
degree of success. Secondly, Sheff indulges his new-found lyrical
renown by cramming almost every inch of The Stage Names with
verbiage so dense that he struggles to spit it all out—an effect
that occasionally undermines the suspension of disbelief necessary to
invest in the sincerity of his message.
Additionally, he trades a bit of his beloved weepy sentimentalism
for a touch of the clevers—shown in, among other things, his
light sprinkling of familiar musical and lyrical references throughout.
(An aside: If by chance this sounds a little bit like the Hold Steady’s
similarly lauded Boys and Girls in America, it seems it’s not
entirely by imagination—the two records even awkwardly share
songs about poet John Allyn Berryman.)
With all that’s stacked up against it then, it’s particularly
impressive that Sheff and Co. succeed on nearly all counts. And while
not the unqualified success that was Black Sheep Boy, The
Stage Names is at the very least a very worthy successor. ZAC
PENNINGTON
MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO.
Sojourner
(Secretly Canadian)
Jason Molina has always been prolific, but Sojourner, the
new Magnolia Electric Co. release on Secretly Canadian, is nothing
short of epic: The deluxe box set contains three LPs, one EP, a
medallion (really), and a DVD documenting the band’s tour through the
great expanses of the Canadian prairie.
Molina recorded this material in separate sessions with 15 different
musicians just after What Comes After the Blues, the first
Magnolia Electric Co. album, was released in 2005. What’s interesting
is that despite the use of different producers (Steve Albini for
Nashville Moon, Camper Van Beethoven’s David Lowery for
The Black Ram) and different locations (Sun Studio for Sun
Session, a lonely room for the spectral Shohola), the
music on the four discs doesn’t sound all that different. Molina’s
rough-hewn voice, full of love and trouble, grounds each of his
literate, earnest compositions. It’s the voice of a man you feel you
could never really come to know; the depths are too deep, the history
too sodden with despair, isolation, and failure.
Sojourner can be seen as a collection of outtakes, but
that’s not to say it’s not full of strong material. Some versions of
previously recorded songs (the wistful, desperate “Hold on Magnolia,”
the driving “Hammer Down”) shimmer in their new incarnations. Other
tracks we haven’t heard before, but they’re just what you’d expect from
Molina and Co.—heartfelt, vulnerable, passionate, lost. There’s a
heartbreaking version of the old blues standard “Trouble in Mind” on
the Sun Session EP. The spare Shohola contains one of
the highlights of the whole set in the haunting “Shiloh Temple Bell.”
The glorious excess that is Sojourner lays out a satisfying
buffet of Molina’s obsessions, all the way from devastating loneliness
to brief, but shining, triumph. CHRIS McCANN
THE LONELY FOREST
Nuclear Winter
(Self-released)
1/2
The Lonely Forest’s debut album overflows with youthful passion. The
sounds on Nuclear Winter are lush and epic. For such a huge
sound you’d expect a symphony, but it’s really made by just three young
men (two of who aren’t yet of legal drinking age). The piano is
explosive—loud and nimble, and the driving force of each song.
The bass is fluid and strong; the drumming is sharp and precise.
But it isn’t the Anacortes trio’s monstrous orchestration that makes
Nuclear Winter notable—it’s the story. Nuclear
Winter is a lofty concept album—”A space rock odyssey into
an alternate dimension!”—about a young man living in a tragic
future. It’s 2563, and earth is so technologically advanced and
overpopulated that the world is doomed to end by rapid global warming
and/or the nuclear holocaust.
Through songs/chapters about space travel, war, fearlessness, and
hiding out in a room while listening to Pedro the Lion’s Dave Bazan,
our protagonist experiences a gauntlet of emotions while watching the
world collapse upon itself.
From the pretty minute-and-a-half prelude to the droning, almost
20-minute-long end jam that accompanies the world’s demise, there’s no
lack of drama. From the seclusion of Anacortes, the Lonely Forest have
created a new world of their own, an alternate dimension sprouted from
the imaginations of boys with a lot of space, time, and probably pot at
their fingertips. MEGAN SELING
The Lonely Forest play their CD-release show Sat Aug 4 at the
Vera Project, with the Robot Ate Me and For Years Blue.
JENNIFER GENTLE
The Midnight Room
(Sub Pop)
Don’t let the name fool you. Jennifer Gentle isn’t some fey female
singer-songwriter, but rather five men from Padova, Italy. And they’re
not particularly gentle. The name comes from a Syd Barrett lyric, and
this band is every bit as strange and psychedelic yet poppy as their
sort-of namesake.
For The Midnight Room, the band’s founder and sole
songwriter, Marco Fasolo, holed up in his home studio—a house
known for its former occupant’s suicide—and wrote, played, and
recorded the album in total isolation. The result isn’t so much
intimate as it is stir-crazy.
“Twin Ghosts” is a soft, wispy introduction, but it’s a feint. The
album really hits its lurch with the strychnine-laced haunt of
“Telephone Ringing.” The track’s demented bounce, tiptoeing guitars,
and evil, elfin vocals recur throughout The Midnight Room,
suggesting not just isolation, but also insomnia and fever dreams. That
instrumental bounce is nowhere more apparent than on “Take My Hand,”
whose romantic plea, “Take my hand early in the morning,” sounds like
it comes not after a night of love so much as a night of fraying
hallucinations. Elsewhere, that sickly carnival swagger gives way to
moments of serenity, as on “The Ferryman” and the stargazing coda “Come
Closer.” But for the most part, The Midnight Room is an
unsettling place. ERIC GRANDY
Jennifer Gentle play a free show Fri Aug 3 at the Crocodile,
with Blitzen Trapper and Hypatia Lake.
Nutria
Leech
Shark
Candirú
