“You know I envy the freedom of Animal Collective, I mean here we have a bunch of guys who from day dot have come at their music from a completely unexpected place,” he pauses and considers his next words carefully, “I mean I’m not making an excuse for the linear rock structure of Okkervil’s music because I am very proud of it, I’m just saying that to do what we have done on this album came from an unusual place and took a lot of time.” The softly spoken Sheff’s voice flashes with a sternness that betrays the fact this is fifth interview in a row that morning.
Another unique factor pertaining to this release I Am Very Far is that it is the first Okkervil River album that Sheff has solely produced. Sheff took a very traditional analogue approach to producing this record, which has left each track in the album capturing a signature as unique as the moment a thought is first thought, before it is distorted by time and reproduction. Sheff explains that these ‘sonic signatures’ that are captured by each track comes from the age of the recording equipment and the instruments of the band that have been loved time and time again. “In the real world there’s an intangibility to machines making them like people, this is unlike a computer,” explains Sheff cryptically. He is urged to expand on this by the silence on the other end of the phone. “Okay so what I am saying is that if you leave a machine out in a field for six months it may still work but its exposure to the elements will change it in an irreversible way, the same way humans mature thus altering the way they do things…” He now makes his point empathically with, “but you leave a laptop out in a field and expose it to the conditions and it will break and never work again!”
Sheff’s penchant for production and love affair with the studio desk came about after he produced legendary musician Roky Erickson’s first album in 14 years, last year’s True Love Cast Out All Evil.
Roky Erickson was one of the founding members of seminal psychedelic band The 13th Floor Elevators, but his career was a little bit more like a rollercoaster as he battled schizophrenia, drug abuse and ended up spending three years in a mental hospital where he involuntarily received electro shock therapy. Erickson, when finally being set free, against all odds returned to music, turning his back on psychedelia and getting into the burgeoning heavy metal scene writing songs about aliens and monsters.
Sheff continues, his respect for the truly amazing old Texan dripping from his words, “I’m from New Hampshire so I didn’t become aware of Roky until I lived in Texas where a lot of my friends at the time were in to his horror rock stuff. But I think when I first got into him I just loved the [13 Floor] Elevator stuff but then realised how much depth was actually in the horror rock stuff. It’s written from a heavily autobiographical perspective.”
This album that Sheff produced for Roky has a warmth and complexity to it that only a producer and a musician who are both on the same level could create. Sheff explains that the connection he felt with Erickson transcended reality. “In order to produce this record I had to open myself up to a willingness to embrace chaos. Rocky elicits a mystical quality that gave me confidence to step outside of myself with his music.” Sheff is surprisingly calm as he talks about his newly found spiritual mentor. “Rocky is just ‘in a moment’ that’s bigger then you. He’s special and different.”
The seeming mysticism of Sheff’s relationship with Erickson, ostensibly, seems to have manifested as a song on I Am Very Far called We Need A Myth. Musically the song seems to mimic the mood of its title through expansive music and Sheff’s warbling tenor vocals. Sheff agrees that there is a lot of mythology surrounding Erickson and that indirectly the song relates to him but what is really about is mankind’s obsession with adding a structured narrative to explain everything. “We need a story to understand the world, we can’t just except things.”
In closing Sheff and I discuss the first song on the album, The Valley, which is a driving rock track that could have been taken off Okkervil River’s breakthrough album of 2005 Black Sheep Boy. When asked if The Valley is the most ‘Okkervil River’ sounding song on album, Sheff comes up with an interesting analogy: “If someone got five different photos of you and said, ‘Which one looks the most like you?’ You would struggle to answer that, wouldn’t you?”
