Okkervil River - I Am Very Far [LP]

"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.