Okkervil River, Christian Lee Hutson
Recommended
Okkervil River’s third album, <i>Black Sheep Boy</i>, may not cut as deep as Big Star’s <i>Third</i> with its exposed-nerve laments about love, death, and love as death—but it comes close. Front man Will Sheff holds nothing back on the Austin sextet’s masterpiece, though what impresses some may merely exhaust others (one critic dubbed them “Overkill River”). It’s an understandable reaction, but for those drawn to Sheff’s destabilizing lyrics—“sometimes the blood from real cuts feels real nice”—and campfire-meets-concert-hall aesthetic, this show promises to be as revelatory as the new, extended version of the record with bonus tracks and covers of influences from Leadbelly to the Louvin Brothers.
by Kathy Fennessy