Black Sheep Boy (Definitive Edition)

Product Description

This is the definitive double-disc set which brings together Okkervil River’s groundbreaking BLACK SHEEP BOY project in it’s entirety, including the original album, the 7-song BLACK SHEEP BOY APPENDIX EP, the song “The Next Four Monthes”, the “For Real” video and a new video of an alternate slower take of “No Key, No Plan”.

Amazon.com

When Okkervil River released Black Sheep Boy Appendix in 2005, it seemed like the band just couldn’t stop themselves. Folk icon Tim Hardin’s tune had both opened and provided the name for the preceding full-length album, and the “Black Sheep Boy” was too compelling a concept to leave behind. Ouch, you sigh, a concept album: But here, the concept disappears, replaced by Will Sheff’s fantastic narrative songwriting and a mix of electrics and acoustics–guitars, pump organs, mandolins, vibraphones, and more. Then there’s this 2-CD Black Sheep Boy Definitive Edition, merging the original album with the Appendix EP. It’s a spare-beauty-turned-turbulent thing. On “Another Radio Song,” Sheff’s an imagist, bellowing and pleading alongside a cresting string section: “There is no escaping it / The way an unborn baby’s ear unfolds in your belly / There is no escaping the thing that is making its home in your radio.” It all becomes a bursting emotional leap. And for the Definitive album, you find that classic rock gem: an unreleased track whose easy brilliance seems effortless. “The Next Four Months” is a pill-popping, husband-ditching classic, “We’re driving down the interstate/ You’re feeling great / You scratch your wrist / And we pretend your kids, your husband / All you left does not exist,” the story goes. You can guess the ending. But it’s the whole piece, words and music, that you have to hear to imagine. –Andrew Bartlett