Okkervil River

Echo - September 22, 2005

Live Review by Adam McKibbin

Audiences don’t tend to like apologies, so it wasn’t a surprise to feel a ripple of disappointment—maybe even resentment—following Will Sheff’s announcement that he and Okkervil River had been touring non-stop for too long and it had finally caught up with the frontman, ravaging his voice and causing the band to cancel the show the night before in San Diego.  The crowd smiled in tight-lipped support, but it was impossible to mask the selfish reactions, the worried sideways looks at companions:  are we about to get the short end of the stick?  Okkervil leftovers?

And perhaps there were those fans who walked away feeling just that, having hoped for an achingly pretty set that showcased Sheff’s delicate side and the band’s often sumptuous and tightly written arrangements.  Instead, Okkervil played like a band that had, indeed, been on the road for a while—anxious to stretch their legs and play around, staying truer to the live moment than the record (in this case, the excellent Black Sheep Boy from earlier this year).  With a catalog that has evolved from “promising” to “essential,” about the only complaint to be made about the Okkervil setlist is that Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg haven’t been able to create a utopian world where Okkervil and Shearwater could exist side-by-side on a setlist (Meiburg discussed the two bands and their relationships with one another in an earlier interview with The Red Alert).  They complement each other beautifully, both as musicians and as personalities on stage.  It will be a pity, though an understandable one, if the success of the two bands pulls apart their collaborative overlap.

Back in the present, Okkervil triumphed throughout their Echo set, especially as they worked through the newest material (with “A Stone” and “For Real” lingering longest).  Faced with fatigue and jet lag, the band responded with big smiles and even bigger volume while Sheff, sore throat be damned, sang like he was being exorcised.  It was an inspiring performance, not so much because it was a guy singing through sickness—that was admirable, but adrenaline has worked wonders for a lot of performers—but because everyone in the band seemed to really savor the entire experience:  the emotional highs and lows of the songs themselves as well as the actual process of playing the show together.  The result was a ragged, dirtier version of the events depicted on Black Sheep Boy (and earlier).

Contemptuous of an early curfew—the venue had to prepare for a late-night “disco dance party”—Sheff returned for an unplanned encore and, after they shut off his lights and turned off his power, resorted to playing unamplified and alone at the edge of the stage.  As the venue finally coaxed him back to his dressing room and the disco dancers came in to play, the audience shuffled and hesitated, wanting just one more—or maybe just five or six.