Okkervil River’s Will Sheff Talks New Album, Showing Up Arcade Fire and New Music Trends.

For over a dozen years at this point, Austin’s Okkervil River has been making intelligent, defiantly lyrical indie rock. And next week, after a few years out of the spotlight, the band will return to bask in it, thanks to the release of their sixth full-length studio effort since 2002, I Am Very Far.

But it’s not like the band was dormant over the course of the past few years. Quite the opposite, actually. In addition to writing new Okkervil material, frontman Will Sheff stayed busy by working with other artists — among them Roky Erickson and Dallas’ Own Norah Jones.

Despite such high-profile dalliances, though, Sheff mostly sounded excited to get Okkervil up and going again when we caught up with him over the phone earlier this week. And, OK, maybe he’s a little bit intimidated, too. Tomorrow night at Gexa Energy Pavilion, the band kicks off its promotional tour for the new album by playing a one-off gig opening for Arcade Fire.

After the jump, Sheff talks to us about the pressures and delights of touring with other bands, his thoughts on how Okkervil River currently fits into the indie music landscape and how Bob Dylan influenced the band’s new music video (see above).

Where are you at the moment? Austin?
I’m in Brooklyn. I’m headed down to Austin in about five days, or something like that. We are going to start rehearsing for the record. It’s a ton of stuff to learn.

What’s going on in Brooklyn today? I know you were recently across the pond over in the U.K. doing your own shows. Is this just more of that travel?
No. I split my time between both places, but more recently I’ve been kind of living here. The whole band is in Austin, except the drummer who lives in L.A., but he also travels a lot.

So, when did you start to split time between the two cities?
About four years ago, we started to go back and forth. It kind of like started out, I’d be here like a month or two, then it turned into a full-time thing.

That’s interesting, because that’s probably when you started writing this new material.
It stared around the time that I wrote The Stage Names. At that time I was just here to write.

It’s been three years since your last release, The Stand Ins. And, in the six years before that, you released five albums. There’s been a little bit of a change of pace there. Was that intentional?
It’s funny because I think some people have a certain impression that we’ve been idle and haven’t’ really been doing anything. I wish that was the case, I wish I had the relaxation associated with that idea. In fact, I’ve been working constantly. Part of what happened is that we did The Stage Names and we did another record, The Stand Ins, right after that.

And those were kind of connected, in many ways, right?
It was sort of an appendix. I have often, in the past, recorded a ton of extra songs. And then thought, “Well, why don’t I just split these up?” Because they’re all related to each other. Tere was Black Sheep Boy, which was supposed to be an EP, and then there was The Stand Ins, and it was actually album-length, and Black Sheep was also album-length, but I wanted to sort of just release it as an EP, like before. But I think that there were some people who wanted to do it as a full-length record. In any case, that came out, and we toured a ton, and then I started working with other people, and that’s when I got the Roky Erickson gig.

And then there was also Shearwater stuff in that time too, right?
Well, I don’t work with Shearwater as much.

But Jonathan is still playing in Okkervil, right? Or is he out?
Not really. He plays on the record, but Shearwater’s a real full-time thing. He does a ton of stuff. He works with other people, too, I think.

Well, still, as far as other projects that you guys had your fingers in…
Yeah. So I did the Roky record, I produced a record for the band Bird of Youth, I worked with Norah Jones. I was kind of working with a lot of other people. So, yeah, I mean there wasn’t an Okkervil record that was coming along, but we were working constantly. In fact, the Roky Erickson record was almost like an Okkervil River record.

Yeah. Rokkervil.
[Laughs.] That’s not my preferred term, but it started to attach itself to the project, whether I liked it or not.

Was it refreshing, though, to return to the Okkervil stuff?
Oh, god, yes, absolutely! I love working with other people — I mean, I love working at all, period. It’s a blast because I get to fuck around and make music for fun, and people actually give me money. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the luckiest man on Earth. I know that there are other people with more brilliant careers than me, but I’m lucky to be doing what I’m doing. But yeah, obviously Okkervil is the reason that I got into my own songs, and all that shit — the reason I got into music in the first place. So I was completely itching to go. I loved working on the Roky record, but the whole time I was there, I was like “Oh, man, I can’t wait to get back to recording our own stuff.”

Was it because you’d come up with your own ideas while working on this other stuff? Or was it just a matter of you just wanting to work on your own stuff ?
Partially, it’s because I came up with ideas while working on the Roky record. You’re always kind of coming up with ideas, being around Roky is just sort of inspiring and powerful. He’s a wonderful guy; there’s something so creatively alive about him. So, yeah, you kind of get a contact high from being around him. It made me go, “Holy shit, I can’t wait to start working again.”

When did you actually start the formal work on the new record?
Right around the time we were finishing up working on the Roky record. So I think it was maybe February, something like that. We were still doing the finishing touches on Roky, I believe, around that time. It was funny because all of the records I worked on kind of overlapped. I just had some of the songs that were done kind of already, were written, and I thought, “Let’s just do a recording session for fun,” and so we scheduled a recording session for three days, and for three days we recorded “The Valley,” “Pirated,” and a song called “I Guess We Lost,” which I really liked, though it’s not a single. Then it was like, “Wow.” Immediately after recording “The Valley,” I said, “Well, there’s the first song for the record right there.”

You kind of have this reputation as this very lyrical songwriter, or a narrative-heavy songwriter. You just mentioned knowing immediately where to put “The Valley.” Is album sequence something that you think of a lot?
Oh, yeah.

Are those two things connected, do you think? The lyrical, narrative songwriting, and the album sequence?
They’re connected, but so is the musical aspect of things, too. I mean, I love writing lyrics, and I love writing, and I love work, and all that stuff, but I feel like a song is about a lot more than just words. And, in a lot of ways, this record is an attempt to do justice to the non-lyrical aspects of things. And there’s something that certain songs might be saying, musically, that they aren’t saying lyrically. “Show Yourself” is a good example of that. I feel like there’s something the music is saying.

What is is saying, then?
I don’t know! That’s why I didn’t say it with words. I know that sounds pretentious, or something like that, but that’s the beautiful thing about music — that you hear certain things and you think, “God, this makes me feel something. This is just a beautiful sound.”

Absolutely, and there are obviously instrumental bands that are able to pull that off.
Oh, yeah. I was listening to the Scott Walker song “Farmer in the City” today, and the music is so at odds with the lyrics. And that’s true for the whole record, overall. The lyrics are kind of depressing, about this impoverished farmer at the end of his rope, but the music is opulent, this beautiful orchestra that’s just, like, incredibly rich, gorgeous sounds, and there’s a feeling of hope in this music. It’s telling a very different story than the lyrics, and I really enjoy that. I am moved by the music in that.

There are times in kind of your own stuff where there’s a little bit of  juxtaposition between the music and the lyricism.
Yeah, and I think that that’s how life feels. I don’t know if you ever experienced this, but there’s moments when you’re in a very, very painful situation, for example, really awful. And you’re thinking, “Oh my God, it can’t get any worse than this. This is really, really tough.” And yet you kind of feel incredibly alive. I think that there are probably a lot of people who have experienced this. I certainly have — where you’re just in some terrible moment, yet it’s so vivid, and it feels very, very alive. It’s almost akin to an ecstatic feeling. And, to me, that sort of says an incredible amount about what it’s like to be human, and what it means to be a living thing. And that’s something I try to express.

In the fickle indie world, there are always trends. You guys, with your lyrical nature, kind of buck a lot of the trends at the moment that focus a lot more on aesthetics more than anything. Would you agree?
True. I think that it comes and goes. I think that songwriting is something that people will always respond to, but it goes in and out of fashion. Right now, it’s not particularly in fashion — especially in the indie world. People are very much concerned with a “vibe,” and sort of a “feel” to a song. And everyone wants a really cool feeling to their song. And that’s an important and cool thing, too, but I hear some songs that I think are pathetically underwritten. But, at the same time, I love some songs that I consider pathetically underwritten. Like “Mony Mony” is not much of a song.

Why do you think that comes in and out of style? Do you think that it’s cyclical?
I think it’s cyclical, like anything. I don’t have any complaints with it, ’cause I think there got to be a moment, like in the late ’90s, when there was a kind of a cult around songwriting. And it was built around certain figures that were very, very good, but it almost tipped over into this sort of self-indulgent self-importance. There’s not very much behind what they were actually saying.

Like, it sounds important, but how important is it really?
Yeah. And then they were good, but they opened the door for tons of bands that were very self-important and weren’t saying anything, and didn’t have much musically that was enjoyable in their recordings. And I think that that’s why everyone was like, “Man, fuck this, dude. I just want to dance.” You know what I mean? I think that that’s partially why songwriting is not something that people are interested in right now, as much. But I always think that people are going to respond to it. It doesn’t really bother me. I’m not just trying to write good lyrics. Like I said, I like “Crimson and Clover” and “Mony Mony” just as much as “Visions of Johanna.”

People are certainly responding to your stuff, and you’ve got some things coming up that are pretty cool — like the fact that you’re playing this Dallas show with “the Grammy Award-winning Arcade Fire.” How did that come to be?
I think that they liked us and wanted us to be on tour. That’s about all I can say about that. I don’t know those guys, or anything like that. I’m going to be meeting them at that show, I’m sure.

So it’s just this show, and then you’re heading off to do your own headlining tour.
Yeah, we are. About a week or so after that. We’re going to Europe, and then we’ll come back and do the big American thing.

Is it weird to have your first promo thing to be on a bill with Arcade Fire, as opposed to doing your own thing?
I’m not gonna lie, it is a little bit weird. Not because of the Arcade Fire or anything like that, to be quite honest. There’s gonna be a huge audience, and it’s gonna be their audience, and they’re really good. And we’re, you know, we’re gonna be trying to keep up. I’ll be straight with you about it: I think we’re a great band, but I’ve seen them live — they’re very good live. I always think of concerts as, when you’re on a bill with a band, that it’s this kind of friendly competition, or friendly war or something like that. And you’re always trying, especially if you’re the opener, you’re always trying on some level to beat the headliner.

So what tricks do you have up your sleeve?
Well, no, that’s the thing! There’s no way! There’s no way we’re gonna win! All I can do is fight my hardest, and then just be defeated and roll over.

Y’all are no slouches. I saw you at SXSW a couple times, actually.
Oh, no, I know. But it’s a great thing, and I love that about being on tour. For example, Titus Andronicus, who we’re taking on tour, they’re a really super-energetic band, and they’re not just going to go through the motions onstage. They’re gonna try to kick our asses onstage. And that’s what any self-respecting band would do as an opener. So then we’re going to have to work twice as hard to prove that we deserve to be closing those shows. It’s a wonderful relationship. I love that whole aspect; I love going out with bands and trying to be better than them. I love seeing a band and knowing that they’re trying to be better than us.

Where do you stand with this new material currently? I know you said you had a lot to rehearse, but didn’t you play a bunch of it at SXSW? At least some of the songs?
Yeah, we played, four or five new songs, overall.

Were those the debuts of those songs?
Yeah, we debuted “The Valley” and we debuted “Rider.” And then everything else we played had come out in one way or another already, but had not been played live yet.

Where do you stand as far as getting the new material ready, and stuff like that?
Oh, it’s going to be a challenge. I mean, these songs… It’s a funny thing because, on the one hand, they’re hard to reproduce live, but on the other hand they were played live. For example, “The Rise,” that’s going to be hard to play live, but if you took away the orchestral elements in the recording, it’s just us playing live in the studio. It’s just that we added two pianos and this complete, weird set-up that we’ll never get live.

So do you just discard those aspects, then?
Well, every single song is a completely different Rubik’s cube. And, you know, some of them just come really easily, and you’re like “Oh, wow. That wasn’t that bad.” And then there’s ones that you have to fight with and fight with until you get it in a form that you feel does it justice. But I’m not a really big believer in trying to reproduce the recordings. I’ve gone to shows where the band sounds exactly like the CD, and what’s the point of that? Why do I want to come if it’s just a CD played really loud with a bunch of sweaty people?

You just released the video for “Wake and Be Fine.” Were there any discussions as far as that being the lead single, or anything like that? What went in to all of that?
Not a lot of deliberation. I was happy with the recording, and it was at pop-song length. I just felt like it sort of embodied what the record is trying to say.

I read that the director was trying to do a little homage to Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with the lyrics in the video. That’s something you’re seeing a lot, these days in videos. With Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” video, for sure.
I never saw the video for that. My whole thing was that I thought it would be really neat to have words blasting at you really fast in the exact order that I’m saying them. And then partially through the video, it would click into two different paths, and the lyrics would start to take their own path, and divorce themselves from the music. That’s kind of what’s happening on the record a little bit, too. It’s like lyrics and music, throwing stuff at each other from across the fence. That was kind of my thought, and that kind of lead into the idea that that was what “Subterranean Homesick Blues” really was. He’s kind of weird, he’s kind of rapping these weird, like, nonsensical lyrics at you, and the video plays that up. I always thought that was really cool. I always thought the INXS version of that, when they used it for a video in the ’80s, as a kid, was really cool. I just wanted to echo that vibe a little bit, too. I thought it was really fun. And we kind of put a lot of little references that are kind of secretly in there, and all that stuff. That are sort of for people that discover it when they want to seek out stuff like that. As far as lyrics onscreen, I have to admit that I didn’t know that one trend.

Well, I hope I didn’t knock down your appreciation for your own video, or anything like that.
Oh, no! I have kind of fallen into this pattern, that I’ll probably try to break now because it’s not good. But in the last four years or so, I haven’t really listened to any knew rock music. It just started to seem like it was clouding my thoughts about music. I wanted to get kind of removed from it. But now it seems that I’m very, very far from it. Like there’s this completely overdone trend in music of XYZ, and I’m like, “Really? That’s a trend?” I wasn’t even aware that it was done, period.

Well, I wish you the best of luck in getting back into new music.
I listen to tons of older music. I just didn’t want to get so sidetracked by the passing show of this or that band. But now I feel like I should make sure that I’m aware of what other bands are doing. I just wanted to blaze our own trails and be the heart of something, and not get caught up in what other people were doing. Because that was all kind of frivolous. I just didn’t want to get caught up in the whole “Keeping up with the Joneses” thing. But now I kind of feel like I’ve gotten driven so far into my own personal wilderness that I need to take a look at the map.

Okkervil River performs with Arcade Fire on Saturday, April 30, at Geza Energy Pavilion