BLACK SHEEP BOY

Description

Triple vinyl LP pressing. In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of this iconic album, Jagjaguwar is proud to present the Black Sheep Boy 10th Anniversary Edition combining the classic Black Sheep Boy album and its counterpart the Black Sheep Boy Appendix with an all new unreleased album entitled There Swims a Swan: full-band recordings made six months prior to the release of Black Sheep Boy which illuminate the album's roots in the traditional American songbook. Featuring beautiful, emotional readings of songs popularized by such artists as Washington Phillips, Lead Belly, the Louvin Brothers, and Roscoe Holcomb, There Swims a Swan takes the listener on a trip through the songs that inspired Sheff while composing Black Sheep Boy and reads like a run-through of that album's themes. Black Sheep Boy is celebrated for its album artwork as well as its music, and the Anniversary Edition collects that artwork in a meticulously reworked package, combining every previous element of William Schaff's imagery with a large new piece by Schaff depicting an updated Black Sheep Boy. The release also includes lengthy liner notes by Will Sheff walking the listener through the circumstances surrounding the album. For Okkervil River fans (the most high-profile of whom was recently revealed to be President Barack Obama, who included "Down Down the Deep River" on his 2015 summer playlist), the Anniversary Edition is a loving, comprehensive, richly expanded presentation of a record many consider to be one of the band's best. For those new to the band, this might be the best place to start, the first step on a long road, the opening to a forest you can get lost in. Review: Fear the Black Sheep Boy - The Black Sheep Boy is angry, and lonely, and hurt. At times he seems poised on the edge of great violence: a building storm grown so powerful it just can't be contained. Fear the Black Sheep Boy, for even as Okkervil's frontman Will Sheff boldly investigates his own creation's origins and motivations, you can't help but feel the fear in his heart. Here is an album full of broken love songs, of ponderings of what it means to live and to die, declarations of fruitless loyalties, and the wild sounds of their hurtful rejections. Two narratives exist throughout the work. The tamer melodies belong to our main character - a man fighting for the one he loves. Identifiable, relatable, real. The other, darker, more disturbing tones appear singly assigned to the mysterious and frightening "Black Sheep Boy." But what is the Black Sheep Boy? It's been said to represent the darker side of folk singer Tim Hardin (who wrote the title track of the album, a song about heroin relapse). A character made to explore the motivations behind Hardin's drug addictions, and his failed loves. That said, I can't help but see the parallels between the story's original author and its ambitious reteller. In fact, I think it's safe to say the Black Sheep Boy represents Sheff himself. Or, rather, a different, infrequently present version of Sheff. One plagued by addiction and forays into painful love. The musings here seem to narrate both Sheff's and the Black Sheep Boy's fight for dominance, and occasionally it starts to feel disturbingly like a fight to the death. Sometimes, Sheff is simply picking up the pieces of what the Black Sheep Boy's latest atrocity has destroyed. Other times, the Black Sheep Boy is screaming his reasons and justifications, and so honestly does he demand understanding and love that it may break your heart. But it's when the two voices sing together that this album truly becomes a work of art. Take 'Another Radio Song' from the appendix. It details Sheff's bold confrontation with the Black Sheep Boy, and the internal battle that ensues. I'll post here my favorite lines from the mythic showdown: "Bless this tiny alley. We have fallen from tall buildings; we have fallen through the air into a garden sweetly smelling of the softest sleeping flowers. Now they sleep under the sidewalk. Now they're waiting for the shining of some future sun to show us all that is your beauty, oh, and all that brings you pleasure. I could sigh into your hide, and say 'I hope I'm here forever.' But, Black Sheep Boy, with your lovers; with your list of favorite pillows; with your list of missing children; with the walls where you drew windows overlooking hidden gardens; cut apart by jagged mountains; climbing up into the air and crumbling down into a fountain where the water waits forever, like a quiet distant treasure. When you rise up to recover; when you leave this tiny alley; when you meet me in the garden with your horns all hung with cedar; every spirit brushing past me, pushing past them in the ether, scream "All this is window dressing! All you are is flimsy curtains. Watch you flame up with a word from us, and won't know that you're burning!" The fight is real, and it not only makes this Okkervil's best record - it makes it one of the best ever recorded. Listen to it. Review: Got it as a gift and my boyfriend loves it - I got this for my boyfriends birthday. Okkervil River is his favorite band and he would always talk about how when the 10th anniversary edition came out he wanted it so bad but didn’t have the money. The only part of this CD he didn’t have was “There Swims a Swan” which are the unreleased songs, but I got it for him anyways as a memento. Now he doesn’t have to keep changing out his CDs for a different one because they are all on the same one. I’m not sure if this is something you would want to buy if you already have all of Okkervils music, unless you wanted to get the unreleased songs as well.