Okkervil River: The Silver Gymnasium (2013)

(ATO)

RECOMMENDED

While other "major indie" artists of the 2000s have settled into a holding pattern, Will Sheff of Okkervil River has only buckled down into ever-mounting focus, intensity and singularity, issuing two and a half albums now of calm enough drama but defiantly limited appeal. You almost certainly have to have already been a fan of his group to enjoy the extremely personal, nostalgia-rooted Silver Gymnasium -- but those who already love their work will find much to pick apart and discover.

This is another in a long line of albums about childhood in (where else?) the suburbs, but Sheff's idiosyncrasies fortunately are his alone, and he has the lyrical restraint to avoid becoming overbearing or mawkish. His was a privileged youth -- he went to boarding school -- but the focus is less upon his own life than the larger, more universal reality of growing up with secrets, oblique beauty and an increasing consciousness of one's own strangeness. He's less interested than was Win Butler in how this all impacts the way he lives his adult life, but Gymnasium nonetheless pulsates with loss like a latter-day Kinks album.

It's to Sheff's credit that this all isn't strictly nostalgia but often permeated with fear and darkness, although it's hard to see how any of this is up to the standards set by his band's best albums -- it seems, in its fashion, too narrow. Opener "It Was My Season" is as good as anything they've done, a rolling piano ballad that towers with gentle longing, its theme of hidden romance powerful at any age. Like several songs on the first half, it sounds vaguely like Suede or Big Country conquering Americana. The band is tightly focused, dedicated passionately to these songs, which grow cloudier and more wistful until the rousing "Stay Young" and the beautiful finale "Black Nemo."

Sheff's preoccupations with the past are widely shared by his generation and are an understandable groundwork from which to operate. But some will be alienated by his intense focus, especially those who don't wish to go "back there" -- it's that vivid, that devoted. More telling is Sheff's vocal performance, which is his most professional and restrained thus far; it seems that the more consumed he is by something for album-length, the less likely he is to really let go.

[SEE ALSO:]
I Am Very Far (2011)
Golden Opportunities 2 EP (2011)