Okkervil River To Release 'Away' In September, Play Winter UK Shows
Thursday, 19 May 2016
Written by Huw Baines
Okkervil River will release a new album this autumn.
‘Away’ is due on September 9 through ATO and will be followed by winter UK shows in London, Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow.
Discussing the record, Will Sheff wrote:
“The new Okkervil River album is called Away. I didn’t plan to make it and initially wasn’t sure if it was going to be an Okkervil River album or if I’d ever put it out. I wrote the songs during a confusing time of transition in my personal and professional life and recorded them quickly with a brand new group of musicians. I got together the best New York players I could think of, people whose playing and personalities I was fans of and who came more out of a jazz or avant garde background, and we cut the songs live in one or two takes – trying to keep things as natural and immediate as possible – over three days in a studio on Long Island that hosts the Neve 8068 console which recorded Steely Dan’s Aja and John Lennon’s Double Fantasy. I asked Marissa Nadler to sing on it and got the composer Nathan Thatcher to write some beautiful orchestral arrangements, we recorded them with the classical ensemble yMusic and then I mixed the record with Jonathan Wilson out in Los Angeles.
“2013-2015 had been a strange time for me. I lost some connections in a music industry that was visibly falling apart. Some members of the Okkervil River backing band left, moving on to family life or to their own projects. I spent a good deal of time sitting in hospice with my grandfather, who was my idol, while he died. I felt like I didn’t know where I belonged. When there was trouble at home, a friend offered me her empty house in the Catskills where I could go and clear my head. New songs were coming fast up there, so I set myself the challenge of trying to write as many as possible as quickly as possible. I wasn’t thinking about any kind of end product; the idea was just to write through what I was feeling, quickly and directly. Eventually, I realized I was writing a death story for a part of my life that had, buried inside of it, a path I could follow that might let me go somewhere new.”
Head below to spin a new song, Okkervil River R.I.P.
Okkervil River Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu November 10 2016 - LONDON Islington Assembly Hall
Fri November 11 2016 - BRISTOL Thekla
Sat November 12 2016 - MANCHESTER Gorilla
Sun November 13 2016 - GLASGOW Stereo
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