“But if I could tear his throat, spill his blood between my jaws,
and erase his name for good, don’t you know that I would?
Don’t you realize I wouldn’t pause,
that I would cut him down with my claws if I could have somehow never let that happen?”

Imagine my delight at discovering, a decade and a half after Black Sheep Boy enjoyed a months-long stint in the CD player of my 2000 Chevy Blazer, that not only was there an entire disc of outtakes tucked behind the main disc (Black Sheep Boy Appendix) in one of those weird fold-out jewel cases, but that Okkervil River had released a tenth anniversary edition of the album that contained another additional disc of previously unreleased cover songs recorded during that era. None of those extras are as good as the album proper, which is to be expected, but what a treat to revisit this record under whatever circumstances.

Beginning with a plaintive, sixty second folk downer borrowed from Tim Hardin to set the album’s theme, Okkervil River’s third full-length album moves away from the mid-tempo dirges of their earlier material, instead modulating between jagged rock numbers (‘Get Real’, ‘Black’), delicate renditions of bandleader Will Sheff’s private confessions, and melancholic ruminations from alter ego “The Black Sheep Boy.” It’s a concept album of sorts, with a moody internal mythos, but one like Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea that is so heart-on-sleeve that its passion overwhelms its conceit.

Treading in the same stylistic waters that Bright Eyes and Magnolia Electric Co. were exploring at the time, Black Sheep Boy distinguishes itself with a sharp sense of pop sensibility and Sheff’s desperation and despair. His songs are full of doomed relationships, lost friends, hopeless romantics, prodigal sons, abused daughters, wanderers, runaways, addicts, depressives. There is no filler here, no gimmicks, no faux–dyed in the wool authenticity. Sheff was practically homeless when writing and recording the album, and when he bleats his heartache overtop of the ramshackle, emo-tinged country-folk tunes the band has worked up, you never for a second think he’s putting on an act. He’s vulnerable in his storytelling, just as the unpolished texture of the music itself feels vulnerable and, at times, even fragile or hysterical. He is unsettled, and his articulate verses are unsettling, just as the album art from William Schaff is unsettling.

Cumulatively, Sheff’s caterwauling agony and the organic production aesthetic give the impression of a man fighting tooth and nail against his demons, and possibly gaining the upper hand, giving Black Sheep Boy an element of catharsis that you would look for in a record from pensive songwriters like Elliott Smith or Bill Callahan.

Favorite Tracks: Black Sheep Boy; For Real; In a Radio Song; Black; A Stone; The Latest Toughs.

Sources:
Corcoran, Michael. “DON’T MOVE HERE… Unless you’re Okkervil River”. Michael Corcoran’s Overserved. 23 October 2022.

Corcoran, Nina. “Life Is Ugly: Okkervil River’s Will Sheff on the 10th Anniversary of Black Sheep Boy”. Consequence. 6 April 2015.