duggup

“Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe” has become my new best friend… well you know what it’s like. You are listening to Last FM and a voice delicatly insinuates itself in your ear, and soon you are tapping your fingers and humming along and before you know it; the song has taken up residence and is trying to show Feist’s 1234 the door (but 1234 didn’t leave).

So head over to Okkervil River’s MySpace site and play “Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe“… you will see what I mean. Bright infectious guitar lines, really interesting vocals (in places it sounds like Robert Smith having fun… this is a good thing), great lyrics, a penchant for silly noises and a killer feel. I find Will Sheff’s voice and lyrics are incredibly compelling; a lot like a David Lynch movie. You spend half your time trying to figure out what just happened and the other half in awe.

Okkervil River are also giving away an album of covers called “GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES“, it’s available for free from their website (http://www.okkervilriver.com). The songs come from radio “live to airs”, various shows and sound checks, peoples’ apartments and in hotel stairways. I am putting in a plug for the THE BLONDE IN THE BLEACHERS:, I have always wanted to do a recording in a stairwell to catch that huge reverb sound….

THE BLONDE IN THE BLEACHERS: I recorded the guitar and vocal at the top of a five-flight stairwell at our hotel in Münster, Germany. We liked the reverb in the stairwell, so we tried to get as much of it as possible in our two little mics. The cleaning lady was angry at us because we hadn’t checked out of the hotel yet. You can hear her during the solo section, two flights down, banging around. Brian recorded the electric guitar track two nights later, in Berlin, standing onstage at Lido while the audience for our set wandered in. The next night, Scott recorded two different keyboard tracks in Hamburg. The higher keyboard part was recorded in the bar of the club we were playing, Knust, again as the audience for the evening was wandering in. The lower keyboard part was
recorded in our hotel room at the Hotel Pacific, which we found out is where the Beatles stayed on their last stint as gigging musicians in Hamburg. There’s a music store next door where they’d buy their guitar strings and Pete Best’s drumsticks and whatnot. Extra special thanks on this song to the amazing work of Jeff Hoskins, who did all of this remote recording, and Erik Wofford, who mixed it from across the ocean.

I like this band and in all seriousness they have been occupying a lot of time on my MP3 player. This is the best indie band I have heard for a while… and dont miss listening to “Plus Ones“, just brilliant.

Really Highly Recommended.