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Will Sheff seems tickled to be playing a venue called Heaven and the
sticky-floored reality of the subterranean space does little to dent his
good mood. This is, Sheff says, Okkervil River's first full length gig after
an age of promotional duties; they've performed little snips and bits here
and there, but they haven't done a show of this length in a while. The sense
of relief and release is palpable, though there is a sense of feet-finding in
the opening few songs and a couple of false starts; Sheff urges his audience to
spot the errors.
They kick things off with The Valley, the opening track of their new
album I Am Very Far. Though the album shares a number of thematic
preoccupations with its predecessors, it's more musically divergent (and
less lyrically intricate), something this song encapsulates with its
persistent percussion and talk of the 'rock and roll dead'. A good part of
the set is drawn from the new release: White Shadow Waltz goes down
particularly well but the subtler creep of Piratess (a reworking of an older
song, Murderess) doesn't appear to grab people in quite the same way; or at
least this is when a good chunk of people in front of me make their break
for the bar. The band also mine their last but one album, The Stage Names,
and play a few tracks from Black Sheep Boy including a stripped down and
compelling version of A Stone, arguably one of their most beautiful and
lyrically rich songs.
Initially a tad overdressed in brown jacket and sweater, Sheff is
eventually obliged to cast off this bookish uniform, and by the time he gets
to John Allyn Smith Sails, with its closing swoop into Sloop John B, he's
down to his shirt. It says something about both Okkervil River and their
fans that one of their most crowd-pleasing songs of the evening is one
inspired by John Berryman's suicide plunge from the Washington Avenue
Bridge.
With a strictly enforced venue curfew, a three minute time limit and men
in Hi-Vis jackets prowling the back of the room, they return on stage to
play, not the promised quarter of an hour ramble of a track, but Unless It's
Kicks, a rousing song made all the more rousing by Sheff's enthusiasm as he
urges the crowd to celebrate their presence in heaven and share with him
this one joyous moment before we're abruptly dispatched into the night and
the clot of Villiers Street. Sheff may be all too aware he's playing a game,
playing a role, but, boy, does he play it well.
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