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Your Moment of Zen

Posted at 7:07 PM on August 10, 2007 by Jacquie Fuller (1 Comments)

I have to admit--sometimes I get a little overwhelmed by all the new music out there. I get--dare I say it--rock'n'roll overload. A certain numbness comes over me, where I start to feel a little ... don't tell my boss ... bored with modern music. But just when I start to get bored, I'm always saved just in the nick of time by some incredible piece of music. This time--it's Austin's Okkervil River that shook me out of my musical complacency. I just picked up their latest album, The Stage Names, expecting to be moved by Will Sheff's impassioned yelping, but I got a lot more than I bargained for. The album ends with a song, "John Allyn Smith Sails," that seriously knocked me off my orbit. The song is about poet John Berryman's suicide in 1972--he jumped off the Washington Avenue bridge. Maybe the song gets to me because I'm a poet, too. Or maybe it's just that, lately, any mention of bridges makes me feel emotionally raw. Or maybe it's the really inventive way Okkervil River sneaks in The Beach Boys' "Sloop John B" in one of the best marriages of irony and heartfelt emotion I've ever encountered. And the picture in the liner notes of the Brass Rail on Hennepin--it all makes sense now. Apparently, Sheff came up with the idea for the song while standing on the Washington Ave. bridge. He'd been a fan of Berryman for some time, and credits his poetry as inspiration for their last album, Black Sheep Boy. All I can say is: Man, does this song get me, right there. And also--why isn't this band getting more recognition? And--one more thing--why no stop in Minneapolis on their tour? Something to do with bridges? (Maybe we can convince them to stop through and do a bridge benefit.)

I didn't know anybody that was hurt or lost in the I-35 bridge collapse, but like a lot of you, I still feel somehow connected to it all. And what I feel right now is this weird contradiction--I want to grieve and I want to celebrate at the same time. I feel sad and grateful. And this album is really speaking to me. Something about this band's energy, and Sheff's howling--that guy howls in a way that seems to convey the beautiful pain of being alive. I feel like that's the moment when something stops being just music--something you hum in the shower--and starts being art. When it knocks you out of your orbit. And it's why I love being part of The Current and public radio: because I know I won't hear music like this--this soul-shaking type of stuff--anywhere else. Heavy stuff for a Friday night, I know--but wherever you're headed tonight, I hope you'll enjoy the gifts the world has to offer: great music, good friends, the simple miracle of being alive.

Comments (1)

Okkervil River is the subject of the latest episode of Musicheads! Check it out here.

Posted by Jacquie Fuller | August 14, 2007 2:02 PM

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