1,104 OKKERVIL RIVER, Honey Harper, Bristol Thekla, Thursday 4th October 2018

Despite the M4 closure last night, I’m braving a trip down to Bristol again… time to catch up with Okkervil River, a band I’d “discovered” following an “Uncut” magazine subscription in 2010. I’d been utterly startled by the power and dynamism of their Trinity set in November 2011 (gig 833) in support of the excellent “I Am Very Far”, however a subsequent pair of releases hadn’t stirred me sufficiently to make a concerted effort to catch them again. I therefore wasn’t in a real hurry to pick up current release “In The Rainbow Rain”, but Tim’s enthusiasm persuaded me otherwise. As with Death Cab For Cutie, a couple of years ago, he was right, as “ITRR” was a more immediate collection of tunes, wrapped up in the usual Okkervil River widescreen Americana/ Byrdsian tinged musical style, oozing with intelligence and songcraft, but also with a seam of blue-eyed 70’s soul running through, recalling Lampchop’s finest hour “Nixon” or even Bowie’s “Young Americans”. Also, in leadoff track “Famous Tracheotomies”, it featured one of Okkervil River’s finest numbers, a gorgeous and languidly delivered autobiographical story of mainman Will Sheff’s childhood illness, linked into a history of, well, famous tracheotomies! Good stuff indeed, so tix were duly snapped up for their Bristol return, this time on the “Dirty Boat”…

Tim picked me up early, and we circumnavigated the reprioritised mess that now passes for Bristol City Centre, our convoluted journey nonetheless parking us up outside the venue at 20 to 8. The opening act was just rounding off at that point – an early one indeed, this! We therefore caught only a couple from Honey Harper, apparently both a band and its’ frontperson, a right proper poser in a suit; the first seemed very trad country, and the second was an overblown tape-backed cover of Dusty Springfield’s 60’s standard “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me”, which just seemed an excuse for Honey to fling his arms around ostentatiously. Not particularly impressed, as you might gather…

Took a wander right down the front, house right, a good viewing spot slightly obscured by the roof-suspended speakers. The new Okkervil River – apparently a brand-new line-up since that 2011 gig – traipsed onstage, with Will Sheff arriving last, eschewing his previous nervous Geography teacher persona for a cross between full-on Fillmore East and beardy peacenik Lennon, all double denim, hair and round NHS glasses. Thoughts of Midlake’s similar metamorphosis were immediately banished, however, with excellent opener “Pulled Up The Ribbon”, sweeping, upbeat and darkly dramatic, Sheff “on it” from the outset and his band backing him up in kind. An early “Love Somebody” was all laconic plastic soul with an absorbingly wordy middle 8 section (Sheff also, rather splendidly, being a lyricist who is unafraid of cutting a short story long), and “Famous Tracheotomies” was given a fully deserved treatment, lazy, hazy and quite, quite beautiful, with the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” keyboard riff (Ray Davies had a tracheotomy, dont’cha know…) a totally apposite outro.

Gregarious too – whether recounting a lengthy story about his nephew’s first words (“prostitute”, “apocalypse” and “pink slips”!), snarkily suggesting newie “New Blood” is, “available everywhere for 1p a stream!” or lamenting a van break-in in Birmingham in which nothing was taken (“they just broke our ignition and now we’re in a shitty rental!”) Sheff had plenty to say and did so in a most entertaining manner. “Judey On A Street” had a lovely undulating keyboard pattern and a touch of the laconic Jonathan Richmans to Sheff’s vocal; “John Allyn Smith Sails” was a ragged and rousing sea shanty singalong, particularly the “Sloop John B” homage; and after a reference to the protests surrounding the Supreme Court vote (“there’s all sorts of shit going on [in the US] that I wish I was there for [now] and glad I’m not!”), a startlingly reworked oldie “Black” was a venomously delivered Frank Turner-esque protest rocker, and the set highlight.

“Our Life Is Not A Movie”, with a dramatically collapsing and discordant middle 8 augmenting its’ widescreen musical scope and vocal loop, ended an utterly rocking set, with the pulsing “Charming Man”/ “Sporting Life” beat of “Lost Coastlines” and a joyous, riotous and communal “Unless It’s Kicks” rounding off an overall one hour 45 minutes performance which seemed half that. Wow. True to his word, Sheff then decanted immediately to the merch stand, so I eventually got to chat and compare trache scars with a very personable frontman who, once again, had led his band through a stunning performance, way better than anticipated. M32 and M4 closures on the way home but after that, who cares? This was just a superb gig!

833 OKKERVIL RIVER, A Classic Education, Bristol Trinity, Monday 21 November 2011

A recent discovery for me, this lot, albeit one which, like US alt-rock/ Americana crossover contemporaries The Decemberists, had been skirting around the periphery of my musical vision awhile before I took the plunge with this year’s release “I Am Very Far”. Finding it an absorbing collection of diverse musical vignettes, by turns stripped back and bare, then overlaid with strident and epic crescendos, and featuring a captivatingly intelligent lyrical perspective similar to both Colin Meloy’s lot and The Hold Steady, I invested in their previous 2 CDs and enjoyed them too! Thus intrigued, I sorted myself a ticket for their brief Autumn tour.

Unable to persuade Tim to join me, I took a drive down the M4 on my own after Grandma arrived to help me put the kids to bed (Rach on Governor training), and, having taken local advice, parked in the cavernous Cabot Circus car park about 5 minutes from the venue. Not the most pleasant of walks, but arrived at this dilapidated old church venue in the murky Autumn dark – very haunting and evocative! After a slight ticket-mare, got into this elegantly run-down large pillar-fringed hall, just as support A Classic Education were taking the stage at 8.15. They played a tough and resonant brand of laconic US surf pop, with some nice hooks and occasional noisy guitar wig-out middle eights, and some 60’s “ooh-aah” melody to flesh out their muscular jangle. They’d sound good on a Summer Saturday drive with the top down...

I took a superb viewing spot stage left, two rows back, and watched a very fiddly stage set-up, particularly on the guitar pedals, before the 6-piece Okkervil River came onstage prompt at 9.15, vocalist and inspiration Will Sheff bounding onstage last, looking like a geography teacher in glasses, beard and tweed, but enthusiastically launching into opener “Wake And Be Fine” a baroque chuntering Tom Waits like procession of a song. And they were off, like a firecracker…

This performance was a real stunner. On record, Okkervil River are a slowly congealing mixture of quiet, backwoods landscapes and swirling, sweeping epics of cinemascopic range; the missing link between “Deserters Songs”-era Mercury Rev and The Arcade Fire, if you will. However, I certainly wasn’t expecting the strident, powerful and dynamic “live” agenda they were setting! Sheff was certainly the main focus, a bundle of nervous energy giving an impassioned yet open and personable performance throughout, but this was also thanks in no small part to guitarist Lauren Gurgiolo. Frail looking in a scruffy pink dress, she nevertheless played her chops like a demon. “Rider” was magnificent, thundering and strident (particularly the “Rock, Rockaway Beach!” line), before a touching and indolent “Piratess” introduced some light and shade.

A brilliant “We Need A Myth”, starting off all Scott Walker-esque lush and sweeping, then building to an epic crescendo, followed some inter-band banter about the lack of personal hygiene on the road (!), then a slew of mid-set technical problems saw Sheff off on a Steely Dan covers band tangent, killing some time prior to the creepy, Violent Femmes wheezing march of “The Valley”. But really, every one was a winner, the “live” performance really adding an unexpected extra dimension to the material, none more so than the penultimate “Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe”. For me the high watermark of their canon, this was greeted with rapture by this reverential crowd, and delivered as stridently, passionately and dynamically as possible.

The pedal steel of encore “A Girl In Port” cleared the air before the final, crashing “Unless It’s Kicks” rounded off a, “crikey, never saw THAT coming!” performance. Adding power and passion to their intelligence and craft, this was WAY better than I’d expected or hoped, and ultimately – and unexpectedly – one of the gigs of the year, from a real find. Magnificent!