Okkervil River - I Am Very Far (New CD)

"The goal was to push my brain to places it didn't want to go. The idea was to not have any idea to keep myself confused about what I was doing," frontman Will Sheff says about Okkervil Rivers newest album. The resulting record, I AM VERY FAR, is a startling break from anything this band has done before. By turns terrifying and joyous, violent and serene, grotesque and romantic, it's a celebration of forces beyond our control. On I AM VERY FAR, Sheff emerges not only as a songwriter of the highest caliber, but a producer and arranger of singular vision. Abandoning the tidy conceptual arcs of Okkervil Rivers previous albums, I AM VERY FAR is a monolithic, darkly ambiguous work, one that doesn't readily offer up it's secrets.