Okkervil River, In The Rainbow Rain

[ATO]
Grade: B-

The cover art for Okkervil River’s latest album is a perfect summation of the music within: a prism full of verdant tropical flora, surrounded by mire stretching into infinity. In The Rainbow Rain’s tracks find Okkervil mastermind Will Sheff unpacking hardship in search of life’s perfect little greenhouses, the incorruptible gleams of hope and beauty in everything from surgery to the death of loved ones to humanity’s very existence. But there’s a thin line between positivity and schmaltz, and Sheff sometimes awkwardly tumbles into the latter, like on “How It Is,” where he channels Coldplay for an “oh”-filled celebration of humility and forgiveness. Like the exotic brush of the structure on its cover, the songs here are among Okkervil’s lushest productions, adorned with choruses and horns and washes of sunny guitar, paired well with whatever subject Sheff happens to be tackling. Even when he gets too sappy, there’s always those stellar arrangements to serve as a saving grace—the record’s own equivalent of that lovely, incorruptible prism on its sleeve.

RIYL: The War On Drugs. Bruce Springsteen. Stories of celebrity tracheotomies set to song.

Start here: It may not be as immediately impressive as In The Rainbow Rain’s Springsteen-inspired spectacles, like “The Dream And The Light,” but there’s a charming cleverness to “Don’t Move Back To LA,” a purposely conflicted slow jam that both tears down and luxuriates in Southern California culture. [Matt Gerardi]

Speedy Ortiz, Twerp Verse

[Carpark]
Grade: B

Speedy Ortiz already completed one follow-up to 2015’s Foil Deer, but in the wake of the 2016 election, the more personal and love-inflected tracks “just didn’t mean anything” to singer Sadie Dupuis, and the project was scrapped. Who knows what was cast aside, but Twerp Verse is as strong as anything the band has compiled. Don’t expect some angrier, politically explicit version of the four-piece: This is still the off-kilter, sometimes rambling art pop that is the group’s stock-in-trade. The main difference is in Dupuis’ lyrics, which were always witty and memorable, but here get bolstered with a lacerating sense of frustration and black humor. With a bevy of minor-key inspirations, these songs follow bleak stories of unwanted male aggression (“Villain”), indictments of apathy (“Lucky 88”), and sarcasm-packed put-downs of pretentious idiots (“You Hate The Title”). The more exploratory electronic pathways of Dupuis’ solo project are here as well, with “Lucky 88” approaching St. Vincent territory at times. With few absolute standouts, it’s a consistent, engaging listen full of little surprises and ongoing discoveries.

RIYL: Pavement on uppers. Deerhoof on downers. Patti Smith making art pop.

Start here: “Lucky 88” is hookier, but “Villain” is most representative of the album as a whole, a downbeat and melancholy melody that belies the sharp bite of the lyrics. [Alex McLevy]

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