Okkervil River: Away

You have to be in a certain kind of mood to digest Away – it’s an emotional transcript of hard times experienced by the band’s lead singer Will Sheff, and the poignant strains of the album may well leave you feeling, well, depressed.

Sure, the instrumentation is delightful – even magical at times – and the production has a pleasantly unaffected quality to it that can remind even the most reverb-happy producers that cleaner is often better. Yet everything on the first half of the record feels underwhelming, with Sheff’s lyrics capturing the mundane and the miserable in a way that ultimately feels rather banal.

That being said, the colourful vocals on ‘Judey On A Street’ offer a renewed sense of colour and shape to the chronicle.

Okkervil River are powerful musicians with the ability to capture memory and experience. That said, the major negative with this experience is the potential misery you may endure if you listen too closely to the lyrics, or indeed the whole album in one sitting. This one is best managed in bite-sized pieces.