Okkervil River Takes Stage, Makes Name

Okkervil’s set was preceded by solo outings from OR/Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg and Seattle’s Damien Jurado, both of whom proved to be excellent complements to the feature presentation by drawing the crowd in tight and creating an intimate mood for OR to rip through. Meiburg’s quite powerful on his own — he sings with a throaty, keening voice that seems to shake the foundations of his brittle, rustic arrangements. Backed only by a trumpet and guitar, he plowed through Shearwater’s excellent “Seventy-Four, Seventy-Five” with a desperate, demanding force. Jurado, by contrast, was quiet, melodic and melancholy, mostly prone to shy between-song patter (save for one story of how his seven-year-old kid told him that his taking other people’s money to hear his “sad songs” was, in his opinion, “a rip off”) that gave way to songs wracked with emotion.

Jurado let the assembled crowd know that the guys from Okkervil River were feeling a bit run down and under the weather and that their spirits could be buoyed if we all agreed to yell “our balls off” upon their arrival. Whether there was any truth to that or if it were simply a well-trod bit of audience-manipulation schtick, the audience was as good as their word, lustily cheering the bands arrival. Indeed, at the show’s outset, OR came across as a band in need of a little warming up. They took an easy, cautious path through their first two songs, “A King and A Queen” and “It Ends With A Fall.” And as they got to middle of their third offering, “No Key No Plan,” it briefly sounded like the band had lost some of the tempo they had established at the beginning. Happily, however, that was the end of whatever kinks they had to work through — from that moment on, they hit a stride and kept with it.

The whole affair was presided over by OR frontman Will Sheff, who gave good voice throughout the show and managed to give even the quietest moments a healthy dose of intensity. Sheff has a sort of gawky, earnest, floppy-haired look to him, but when he performs, this undeniable charisma comes to the surface as he navigates through the bands material, which is at turns vibrant and merry, but often very rueful. Somehow, Sheff makes perfect sense as the guy encouraging listeners to “take the world’s stupidest stand” one minute, only to offer moments later that “some nights” he “thirsts for real blood.” If they ever get around to making the Purple Rain of Austin (and they should, because nobody wants the aliens who forage through our apocalyptic remains to come to the conclusion that the Real World is the Ur-text for all things Austin), Sheff would likely lose the love of Amanda Mattos to Spoon’s Britt Daniel, but he’d win the sympathies of the audience in the same way John Cryer did in Pretty In Pink.

Lately, I’ve been assaying how bands onstage have managed their peaks and valleys, and I thought that Sheff and company did a fantastic job last night, keeping on a path that built to a pair of fine crescendos. The latter third of the show, beginning with “Unless It’s Kicks” seemed to find a new gear almost immediately and just kept on coming. The band carved out caverns of sound in a, frankly, awesome performance of “So Come Back I Am Waiting,” which in turn led to thoroughly pleasing rendition of their current hit “Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe” and a particularly scabrous version of “For Real.” They concluded their first set with “John Allyn Smith Sails,” which makes fine use of the Beach Boys lacerating “Sloop John B.” A fantastic encore followed, with the band throwing their hearts into turning “Okkervil River Song” and “Westfall” into a catharsis we couldn’t help but feel.

All in all, a pretty effing great night of rock. Once OR found their step, they really blazed, switching between their merry popcraft and their darker, more gothic songs effortlessly. Damien Jurado, deserves an extra mention of credit, by the way, for bringing the audience to rapt, intimate attention by the end of his set. It was pretty clear by the time he was through that this wasn’t going to be one of those nights in Washington where the chit-chat of the crowd threatened the signal-to-noise ratio. OR just came out and started pulling ripcords, and by the faces of the concert-goers afterwards, it looked like everyone got some satisfying release.

Set List:
A King and a Queen
It Ends With A Fall
No Key No Plan
The Latest Toughs
A Girl In Port
Song of Our So-Called Friend
Plus Ones
A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene
Unless It's Kicks
Black
So Come Back, I Am Waiting
Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe
For Real
John Allyn Smith Sails

A Stone
Okkervil River Song
Westfall

Photo from the band's MySpace page