After twenty years fronting indie rock icons Okkervil River, Will Sheff has decided to set out alone. Debut solo record Nothing Special, out this autumn via ATO Records, confronts both his past and visions of the future, skewering the romantic delusions of grandeur which come attached to rock music. “When I was just a kid, I got caught up in the dream of being a rock and roll star,” Sheff explains. “Like so many other young people, I fell in love with the idea of being called to this glorious path outside of ordinary life.”
The ambition was shared by many people within Okkervil River, particularly drummer Travis Nelsen, who Sheff describes as a brother figure. “We would trade tales of hilarious antics and outrageous excess and tragic death like they were almost scripture,” he continues. Disciples on the road to martyrdom, worshipping at the altar of legends who went before them and practising self-destruction in search of the paradoxical legacy inherent within short bright bursts of life.
But of course reality is not so simple, and excesses and tragedy too often come with no redeeming features. Something thrown into sharp relief as Sheff’s relationship with Nelsen deteriorated then ended abruptly. “Travis and I fell out painfully, and he died in the early weeks of lockdown,” he explains. “I think a big part of Nothing Special centres around grieving for him, grieving for everything my friends have lost, grieving for the rock and rock and roll myth, and trying to open my eyes to a more transcendent reality.”
Lead single ‘Estrangement Zone’ takes this transcendental ambition into overtly speculative territory. A quasi-sci-fi sound owing as much to retro psychedelica as any futuristic vision. Or perhaps it is both simultaneously. Retrofuturism. An old-fashioned vision of what is to come. The accompanying video, directed by Sheff himself, nods to Tarkovsky and Jodorowsky in its vivid dystopia, the calamity of man unfolding within something larger and stranger.
Nothing Special comes out via ATO in October. Order it now from the Will Sheff Bandcamp page.
Photo by Bret Curry