Okkervil River - "The Latest Toughs". Recently I wrote about "For Real", the lead-off single from Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River's fourth LP. I hadn't yet heard the record, but my hair had been blown back, my heart turned hard and black, from that song. Now, however, the album's in my hands, and I'm even more affected. Black Sheep Boy is a marvel, wider in scope, deeper in sentiment, than anything the band's done before. Whereas I got annoyed at Down the River of Golden Dreams, wishing the non-Sheff parts of the band hadn't been shunted to the side, here they're cooperating like the finest pirate crew off the American east coast. It's a song cycle about a freakshow kid, or maybe the devil, about fear and violence and boldness and inevitability and rebirth. It's folk music and rock 'n roll, it's the fiercest record I've heard this year, and probably the one most intensely felt. Some of it shimmers and shuffles, but a surprising amount of it bursts, explodes, roars. Lots of critics have commented on Sheff's over-abundant voice, but I don't hear any of Bright Eyes' spitting insanity. No - he's quiet in the right places, he sighs and goes numb, he fades to grey, and then when the words crackle, when they flame, he's there putting voice to them.

"The Latest Toughs" is fantastic just because of how pop it is. When the band climbs their hilltop and crunches into the chorus, when the guitars are sunstabbing and the spirits are singing backup in those ridiculous high-pitched voices, when the tambourine shakes and the rhymes are rhyming, it's crazy catchy, it's glad, it's wonderful, it'll shove you over and then pick you right up. It'll punch you in the face and then stitch up the wounds.

(And I didn't even mention the album's artwork! William Schaff has outdone himself. It's a beautiful object - go buy it.)

Cranebuilders - "Public Space". Gloomy indie rock from Liverpool - not gloomy like rain, like Radiohead or Coldplay, but gloomy like Glencoe when the clouds are hanging but not doing anthing, gloomy like Nick Cave or Smog when he's down. Since I don't make things easy for myself, "Public Space" isn't really gloomy, actually - it's one of the lightest things on Sometimes You Hear Through Someone Else. Tommy Roberts has a bit of a growl to his voice, just enough rasp to ground the ethereal harmonies. Chugging to the chorus, things break into a glittering place, a numb-and-dreamy dancefloor narrative, the hook like a hook. I imagine a tired, cathartic dance at the two minute mark, one man alone on the silver floor, drink in hand, trying to let his feelings out. [buy]