Okkervil River at City Winery

Will Sheff

Vocalist/guitarist Will Sheff grew up in Meriden, New Hampshire, then attended university in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 1998, he and two friends from Meriden decided to form a band and relocate to Austin, Texas. They called the trio Okkervil River, from a short story by Russian author Tatyana Tolstaya. The band attracted attention with a performance at the SXSW festival in 2000 and became a regional fixture before achieving national success in the mid- to late 2000s. Sheff is the only remaining original member of Okkervil River; the band presently consists of Sheff, guitarist Will Graefe, keyboardist Lip Talk (Sarah K. Pedinotti), bassist Benjamin Lazar Davis, and percussionist Cully Symington. The band released its ninth and most recent album, In the Rainbow Rain, on April 27, 2018.

Okkervil River performed two very different sets (with separate admissions) tonight at City Winery. The set lists covered a wide span of the band's eclectic catalog. After struggling with some personal issues, Sheff is happier these days, so the early set was bright and buoyant. The band shifted away from pastoral Americana in favor of inventive indie rock and electronic-tinged psych-pop. The band's former bucolic folk signature was not entirely missing, but sometimes a rowdy and left-of-center experimentation transformed its trajectory into something a bit different. Fortunately for the band, the audience responded favorably to the new direction, perhaps because this new exuberance was injected into old songs rather than introduced with new songs. The early show, at least, did not even feature any songs from the most recent album. After 20 years leading Okkervil River, Sheff has evolved the project in a rather curious manner.

Setlist (early show):

1. From a Cutlass Cruiser
2. The President's Dead
3. I Guess We Lost
4. Calling and Not Calling My Ex
5. Mermaid
6. Judey on a Street
7. Stay Young
8. All the Time Every Day
9. Walking without Frankie
10. Unless It's Kicks
11. No Key, No Plan

Encore:

1. The War Criminal Rises and Speaks