Of course it's not typical. For one thing, it's Ash. For another, it's 1980--a time when the world was bathed in faded orange and all our t-shirts were either monochrome or E.T. iron-ons. We forgot about this ambient cusp of existence between disco and Don Johnson as soon as we hit 1985 and discovered the magic of neon and asymmetry. But don't let the contemporary hipster culture fool you--nobody wore porkpie hats on the backs of their heads. Well, nobody outside of Tears for Fears.
There are energetic drummers, and then there is Travis Nelson. Truly, he is 'Animal.' Okkervil River albums have so much personality, the songs themselves become characters: players, people in the guise of animals or gods (and who can tell the difference sometimes?). And like watching a melodrama, we are witness to emotions that heave and plummet with frightening force. The songs can be drunken youth: the rotund boots on their feet knocking wildly on every surface. Or they can be villainous and smart, full of smiles and wishing-you-well up to the second they thrust the dagger into your belly. Pitched, lust-crazed, calculated: that is one half of an Okkervil album. The other emotion is equally intense in its thick, slow agony: the eternity it takes to remove the knife, knowing you have it all to do over. And so it goes: soaring, drunk, angry, knife, stab, agony, pull-it-out-and-let's-do-it-again. At the San Fransisco Bathhouse in Wellington, New Zealand, on a crisp early a
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