Gig Review: Okkervil River, Manchester Night & Day, 26th September 2005
Having half-listened a couple of times to an (illegally) downloaded copy of Black Sheep Boy I didn’t really know what to expect of Okkervil River; beards, perhaps, and check shirts. And these I got, and much more, on a late late Monday night.
First things first. I missed the first of three support acts but arrived to see most of Flim School‘s set and was very impressed by their mix of shoegazey guitar washes and driving bass and drums which, more often than not, brought to mind The Cure, which can never be a bad thing. They’re playing here again next month in support of The National so I might pop down to get a second opinion.
Next up was Superkings, a seven-piece from Lancashire, whose piano-led folksy bluster was quite frankly awful, like a low rent Hothouse Flowers. The nasal-voiced singer/pianist/Van Morrison wannabe came across as particularly smug and the occasions where he and the backing singer turned to sing to each other were seriously cringeworthy.
Okkervil River were simply magnificent. Ok, only two beards out of five but that’s pretty good going these days. Singer Will Sheff may look, and sing, a little like Julian Casablancas but I won’t hold that against him because on stage he was the life and the soul, a magnetic presence in a set which lasted a good hour and a half and ended in the early hours of Tuesday morning. A few tracks I recognised from Black Sheep Boy, the standouts being “In A Radio Song”, “The Latest Toughs” and “So Come Back, I Am Waiting”, but the wealth of other material suggested that their other albums will be well worth checking out.
While Sheff remained attached to his acoustic guitar throughout his fellow band members took on keyboards, accordian, pedal steel (yay!) , bass and trumpet. The use of the trumpet was especially good and brought back memories of seeing the great Neutral Milk Hotel back in ’98. Neutral Milk Hotel are a pretty good reference point when describing the Okkervil River sound but there’s much more to them with echos also of Bright Eyes, The Strokes, Eels, The Decemberists and even a bit of Buffalo Tom.
A broken guitar string brought the main set to a premature end but, string fixed, they returned for a long encore which included a brilliant, sprawling “Kansas City” and ended with “Okkervil River Song” (Ok, I looked up these titles online afterwards). Sheff is an impassioned, animated front man and by the end he seemed physically and emotionally exhausted. Which is how it should be. On the way out I shelled out a tenner for Black Sheep Boy which, along with the six quid I spent on the ticket, just goes to show exactly how much downloading is killing music.
File under Gig Reviews,Reviews.