Brightest Young Things

As I walked into the Rock and Roll Hotel last night, I stumbled across a pleasant surprise, a wonderful way to kick off a fantastic night of music. Okkervil River keyboardist and Shearwater lead singer Jonathan Meiburg was playing an unannounced solo set as the opening act of the night. My experience with Shearwater was limited, knowing them only as a side-project for Okkervil frontman Will Sheff, but Meiburg’s performance inspired me to run out and buy a Shearwater album immediately following the show. His stunning vocals, reminiscent of Jeff Buckley and Scott Walker, and the urgency and intensity with which he delivered every lyric had me transfixed and even a little bit intimidated, until he graciously thanked the audience between songs to lighten the mood.

Almost immediately after Meiburg’s excellent performance, Damian Jurado took the stage and managed to capture the crowd in his own way. His songs, which Jurado himself described as “depressing as hell,” held the audience in rapt silence, while he cracked jokes and told stories in between, evoking huge laughs from the crowd. The contrast between the dark material and the jovial between-song banter was a surprisingly effective way to keep the audience’s attention, essentially giving us a chance to catch our breaths and recover between songs. By the end of the set, Jurado had a big smile on his face and told us that we needed to keep up the energy and give Okkervil River a rousing ovation when they took the stage, since many of their members were exhausted and fighting illness. Twenty minutes later the audience obliged, and the band seemed to feed off the energy for the rest of the evening.

From the opening trumpet notes of “A King and a Queen” to the crowd screaming “Evil don’t look like anything” along with the band in the evening’s final song, “Westfall,” Okkervil River was in top form. Sticking largely to this year’s The Stage Names and 2005’s Black Sheep Boy, Will Sheff and company blasted through 17 songs, and not once during the hour and a half set was the packed-to-the-gills Rock and Roll Hotel audience not completely fascinated with what was going on before them.

After opening with several Black Sheep Boy songs, Sheff asked the crowd if they were ready for some stuff from the new album, which of course they were. The back-to-back rock bounciness of “A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene” and “Unless It’s Kicks” got the crowd dancing, and the latter lead into perhaps the band’s most famous song, “Black,” which sent the audience into an absolute frenzy. The contrast of this portion of the set to the mellower opening portion is what makes Okkervil River such an incredible band. Over the last few years, they’ve evolved from a band rooted in alt-country to a rock band who seems to be able to take on any sound and make it their own. They have become incredibly dynamic in what they can do, and this really stood out in their live show, as they moved from anthems to slow songs and back almost seamlessly.

They closed the regular set with the excellent “John Allyn Smith Sails,” which uses a portion of the classic “Sloop John B.” in the middle of it. Sheff came out dressed down for the encore, ditching his shirt and tie for a fresh t-shirt and launched into a beautiful rendition of “The Stone” while much of the band remained off-stage. The band returned to play two old favorites (which admittedly, I wasn’t familiar with) from their first full-length, Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See, and the audience just about lost it in the opening chords of both “Okkervil River Song” and the aforementioned closer “Westfall.”

If this show is any indication of what Okkervil River does on a nightly basis, then this band is something truly special live. They seemed to leave everything they had out on stage, even at the end when some of them were looking a little worse for the wear. After many years of building this band into its current incarnation, Will Sheff may finally have enough stellar songs to play with the vigorous energy he brings to the stage to take this band to another plane of stardom. I have a feeling we won’t be able to see them in a place as small as the Rock and Roll Hotel ever again.

all photos: Joel Didriksen http://www.kingpinphoto.com/
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Previously in Live DC:

• 5/24: LiveDC: The Adicts @ RNR Hotel
• 5/24: LiveDC: The Donkeys @ Black Cat
• 5/23: LiveDC: The Barr Brothers w/ Kishi Bashi @ The Hamilton
• 5/23: LiveDC: Damien Jurado @ Black Cat
• 5/23: Report: Soundbites 2012
• 5/22: LiveDC: Spirit Animal @ Red Palace
• 5/22: LiveDC: Astra Via @ Black Cat
• 5/22: LiveDC: Father John Misty @ Rock & Roll Hotel
• 5/22: LiveDC: Drive-By Truckers and Lucinda Williams @ Merriweather
• 5/22: Photos: Summer Camp takes the "Ladies of Town" Drag Show