An Okkervil River Runs Through It (again)

If you missed this band on their first tour, well, they're coming through again. And if that's not enough, they're releasing an "appendix" to Black Sheep Boy which Jagjagwhatever says are either songs that didn't appear in the original or a re-interpretation of the basic "story/concept" behind the album.

This Appendix is Okkervil River's most adventurous and eccentric work so far. Working deliriously long hours with Black Sheep Boy collaborator Brian Beattie, Okkervil River recorded Black Sheep Boy Appendix entirely on spare days and weeks off from their recent tours with the Decemberists, Rilo Kiley, and Earlimart, holding to a self-imposed schedule that left no room for second guessing any decisions. Instead of choosing to keep things simple, though, the band took the opposite approach, trying out any and all production ideas without any time to second-guess them. The resulting work shows the full freedom and playfulness of a band working too fast to wonder and what they're doing and having too much fun to care. Black Sheep Boy Appendix is a wild, sloppy 35-minute rip through a fantastical Technicolor landscape that's crumbling into pieces as it unreels, a last footnote on a strange and dangerous universe before the band departs for points as yet distant and unknown.

Be sure to check out the Zak "Drowning Boy" Margolis directed video for their emo-classic "For Real" - it's quite depressing & dark but has a happy ending what with the girl getting swallowed and cutting her way out of the bad man from the inside out...