The idea of these songs is an album based around the title track (a song by Tim Hardin) in which Okkervil River imagine the Black Sheep Boy to be a horned creature with a habit of ripping the throats from its prey with it's large claws.
Sounds like it could be a fun album huh?

"they'll lead you up the hill in chains to their popular refrains until your slaughter's been arranged, my little lamb, and it's too late to talk the knife out of their hands"

Stranger still to think of the kind of music that accompanies this violence - somewhere between the alterna- country-pop of Sparklehorse etc in its quiet moments, right through to The Get Up Kids when it hits its straps. Singer / songwriter Well Sheff has not only a way with words, but also possesses one of those classic Americana sounding voices (I keep reading references to Will Oldham, but that's just an outright lie). Best just to say hard to describe but easy to picture.
And yet the music is even harder to describe - having read quite a bit about them I've noticed that nearly every one else has the same problem. So here's a definitive description: bedwetting folk-rock pumped full of steroids playing the Jonathan Richman back catalogue at the wrong speed. Or something similar...

"some nights I thirst for real blood, for real knives, for real cries... sometimes the blood from real cuts feels real nice when it's really mine"

So the power of Okkervil River is indeed the music, but the words sure hold their own. It's hard to fault this album on any level - so confident is it in its own abilities.

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Black Sheep Boy
2. For Real
3. In A Radio Song
4. Black
5. Get Big
6. A King And A Queen
7. A Stone
8. The Latest Toughs
9. Song Of Our So-Called Friend
10. So Come Back, I Am
11. Waiting
12. A Glow