This post is from Out the Other's 2009 Bonnaroo Artist Previews, where I will be posting previews of all the musical acts playing the 2009 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. Please check out and subscribe to the full site to learn more about all of this year's performers.
Editor's note: This is a guest preview from PopMatters contributor Eddie Ciminelli, who will also help me cover the Bonnaroo festival on Out the Other next month. You can read more of Eddie's writing on PopMatters; he can be reached at ejciminelli@gmail.com.
I have always been drawn to lyrics as much as melody in my pursuit of my pop music cravings. Even as a young child I would record songs from the radio via cassette and rewind songs over and over again until I learned all of the words by heart. Through the years, my attraction to the literary nature of music has become even more obsessive as I labor over mixes for the women I love, who I hope one day will love me back. Because inside so many of these three to four minute pop gems one discovers pure poetry of unrequited desire and unspoken emotions - things I can never quite put into proper words myself, so instead I let my favorite musicians do so.
There is the Midwest college classmate for whom I copped Damon Albarn’s farewell to Justine Frischmann in Blur’s “No Distance Left to Run.” There is the Long Island photographer who is forever the feminine antagonist of Bill Wither’s submissive “Use Me.” And then there is the young lady who grew up a mile down the road who several years ago I gave Okkervil River’s, “Song Of Our So Called Friend.” When I handed her the mix I made her I secretly prayed she would listen to this song on repeat for hours on hours end because Will Sheff said everything I wanted to (“Your face’s falling tears/ to me they’re lovely and they’re dear/ though you don’t love me and it’s clear/that I will never see you in my arms.”)
I was shopping in my beloved Newbury Comics in my former college town when I came across Okkervil River’s album Black Sheep Boy as a staff pick. I recall reading some positive reviews about the album and trusting on the dependable tastes of the store’s staff, I bought the album on a whim with a handful of other purchases. When I returned to my friend Steve’s apartment where I was crashing, I showed him my purchases. When he came across the Black Sheep Boy, he smiled and complimented me on my selection and was stunned when I told him I had never heard their music before. Knowing my taste in music as well as anyone, he was confident that I would fall in love with the album.
How right he was.
The album was one of the rawest and sincere albums I had heard in a long time. Sheff’s voice is mic'd loud and up front and he moans as much as he sings. He sounds fucking hysterical and heartbroken and you would have probably never guessed it cause he was in all likelihood that “sweet, quiet guy in the corner.” The sequence of the album reads like a relationship: from the dark edgy obsessiveness of “For Real”, the gentle compromise of “Get Big”, to the inevitable disappointing bitterness in heartbreak found in “A Stone,” Sheff does not shy from saying it like it is. And I respect that.
But this band is much more than this single record. They have put out two critically acclaimed albums since Black Sheep Boy (The Stage Names and The Stand Ins) and their following continues to grow in size. Yet, even four years after Black Sheep’s release, I find myself going back to it regularly and still finding new lyrics that resonate with me on a personal level.
I have only had the opportunity to see the band play once before this year’s Bonnaroo festival - I attended a show several years ago in Brooklyn with my then girlfriend and my roommate. I woke up the next day hungover, with little recollection of the show, and walked into my roommate’s room to ask him what happened. He looked at me, startled, and proceeded to inform me how shitfaced I became and confrontational I was whenever anybody – he included- looked in the vicinity of my girlfriend.
“I have never seen you like that before. You had a beer in one hand, a whiskey in the other and you kept your girlfriend six inches away from you all night long. You belted out every word to a few songs and then during some you just stood silently, looking like you were on the verge of tears. You were a complete and utter mess.”
If that is not a recommendation to see a band play live, then I don’t know what is.
"Song of My So-Called Friends"
"A Stone"
Okkervil River plays The Other Tent on Sunday from 4:30-5:45 p.m. Check out the full Bonnaroo schedule on the official Bonnaroo website.
