Photo Credit: Bret Curry
Today, Will Sheff — leader of the long-running indie rock group Okkervil River — shares ‘Nothing Special‘, the title track from his debut solo release out 7th October via ATO Records.
With the clarity and melodic elegance of a traditional ballad, ‘Nothing Special’ takes the listener on a journey through a swirling landscape of youthful ambition, death and dissolution, and a surrender into belonging. Acoustic guitar lines intertwine, drums shamble and synths swell as Sheff sings with hard-won wisdom about accepting loss, making peace with pain, and finding a place in the world.
In a new profile at Vanity Fair, Sheff delves deep into the personal circumstances that informed the creation of Nothing Special. Read the Vanity Fair feature here.
Produced by Sheff and recorded over three different sessions with John Congleton (St. Vincent, The War On Drugs), Matt Linesch (Edward Sharpe, Gil Landry), and Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers, Conor Oberst), Nothing Special finds Sheff operating on an idiosyncratic yet intuitive internal logic. Through these eight expansive, convention-defying songs, Sheff incorporates a fluid yet surprising array of influences — baroque pop, blurred-lens synth ballads, sci-fi psychedelia, 1970s and ‘80s ECM Records releases — to his carefully crafted narratives and searching anthems.
Released earlier this month, lead single “Estrangement Zone” stakes out some of this new territory. Stereogum, in naming “Estrangement Zone” one of the Best Songs Of The Week, described it as “an anxious parable about society’s decline that somehow manages to sound futuristic and ramshackle all at once.”
“The Spiral Season”
“In The Thick Of It”
“Holy Man”
“Like The Last Time”
“Marathon Girl”
“Evidence”
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