Okkervil River’s new album, The Silver Gymnasium, is justly receiving rave reviews across the board.  As mentioned before here, The Silver Gymnasium is a nostalgic look back (circa 1986-’89) by talented leader Will Sheff at his childhood upbringing in Meridien, New Hampshire.  Throughout, the album manages a somewhat brighter outlook and sonic hue than on prior Okkervil releases (all fantastic, in their own right).  In addition, the album has been crafted to reflect the music of the time when Sheff was in Meridien, including emphasized synthesizers (which may have been a consequence of Sheff’s other recent solo efforts) and other effects heard less often on prior albums.  This past Monday, the band performed at WNYC, and you can watch the band perform three superb songs from the new album that are guaranteed to make their mark on you.  Stay Young has quickly become one of our favorite songs of the entire year.  Check out the powerful WNYC performances below, and go buy the new album HERE.  And if we may: “How long have you been missing love?”

We can’t wait to catch them next month when they hit Cali, including on October 20th at the Wiltern in LA.  There’s also a video game associated with the new album, which you can play HERE.

For the adventurous and exactingly literate, the three songs’ rich lyrics are at bottom.

Down Down the Deep River:

“You’re spit into the center of your hometown. And there are leaves in the street, and there are friends around you now, and all the days in your life in a line (or the way they seemed by ’89)… But it’s not alright. It’s not even close to all right.

Down a hall of a house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
Down a hall of a house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)

We lie awake at night in a tent. I say, “Tell me about your uncle and his friend, because they seem like very bad men. Well, we want to keep away from them!” (Bend in the road back there. We saw the place they go.)

“Tell me about the greatest show, or the greatest movie you know, or the greatest song that you taped from off the radio. Play it again and again. (It cuts off at the ending, though.) Tell me I’m always going to be your best friend. You said it one time, why don’t you say it again? All the way down the line to where the telephone ends, come on and shout it on down the wire! And that it’s not alright, that it’s not even close to alright.”

Down a hall of a house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
Down a hall of a house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)

And as the rescue party, the volunteer team – they’re just kids of eighteen, and it’s the worst thing they’ve seen – as they’re all standing around that tree, and I’m so sorry, and I can’t stop crying.

(Oh, I know.)

Shivering from the late fall cold, I felt like a solid ghost. I ran, and I couldn’t slow. My father found me though, and my father took me home. He said, “Oh, son, I saw you get knocked down and I ran out. I bet your head was spinning! With that bright pain you’re stunned, when you’ve only just begun to be only just beginning. Tossed in the viper pit, all those feelings and fears and all the difficult shit in all those tender years. There was something in the air… Something gathered in the air. Something singing in the wind… Oh, I’ll be your fighter and I’ll be your mirror, and you’ll be all right because I’ll be right here. Oh, kid, I’m not going anywhere. I swear I’ll try to not be going anywhere. Though it’s not all right, it’s so far from all right, we’ll make it into a choice somehow. I don’t know. But you’ll have a choice somehow.

“Down a hall in your house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
We can never go back; we can only remember
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)

“And maybe they told you about the summer sky. And maybe they said there’s a great gold spirit in the summer sky, and all your friends – all your best, best friends – are going to gather around your bed at night. Well that doesn’t make it all right, because it’s still so far from all right. Oh, kid, I know.”

Down a hall in your house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
Up the stairs, four flights up, can you feel my heart shiver?
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
Walking in the dawn, with that dream getting dimmer and dimmer. Say you still see it. Say you remember. Are we going to the deep river? I know it’s scary, baby.”

Stay Young:

“Young, stay young, stay strong and get on with it; gone way gone, one day it’s all gone and you’re all done.

All my friends are running to their own corners, the hurters and the haters and the faders and the mourners. The world goes to its work and it is not gentle, in what it breaks you down into.  All my friends are looking in life, and it’s a long, long, long, long, lonely time. I said that when you met me I was just dying. I said it to no one. I said it in silence.

Young, stay young. Face dawn, all talk and quick.  Stunned,stay stunned, mind blown, and your jaw drops, and all these hateful people judging and hand-wringing. Oh, lord, why don’t you bury me in all they call sinning? Open up your heart, show me the place where love is missing. How long have you been missing love?

I see all creation pulsing and divided up between it. Now you have to lay me down because my head is spinning.

Try, try hard to drop fear and to drop your guard. Off, off of love, off drugs. Just feel it in your blood.

And I call to all my friends: all the cracked-cassette-tape-thrillers, all the hand-inside-the-tillers, and the hundred-dollar-billers, standing by the stone that was rejected by the builders, there was drinking at the bar, they carried from the burning building.

Never let it be said daddy wasn’t willing. Well I know you miss him, girl I’ve lost the edges off the earth, you make it wider. When I see your crying, don’t you know it’s killing me?

Now climb, climb up. Way up to see the sun. One, one draw. One life. One love. You’ve only got one.

And young, stay young girl. Get tough.  Get on with it.  Young, stay young. It’s a heartbreak; step with it; stay young.”

It Was My Season:

“Tell me a reason
To break things off
Stop the bleeding
When it’s my season
Mind was just revving
Your eyes they went hard
Our parents were freaking
But it was our season
All that time ago

If you want to stop our thing you’ll stop my heart
All this pain inside’s still just too sharp
What was I thinking?

Step out of your trailer
And into this dark
It’s warm and it’s breathing
And it’s our season
Your dad is half sleeping
But really he’s gone
Can you hear his VCR weeping
They crossed his wires completely
When they made him fire that gun

I’ll say to you: to cut it off’s to cut me down
If they take me out of school, you out of town
I called a friend, my world at end, my words unwound
I said: It’s crashing down around our heads
We’re dumb, we’re dead, shut up about it now

I won’t say I’m sorry
And how would they know?
Below the Atari
Well, I could feel your heart was just going
We’ll meet on the weekend
Your dad won’t be home
Your sister’s out cleaning
You don’t need to speak it
Because I know, baby, I know
I said I know
You know I know
I know (that it was our season)
Baby, I know (it’s hard to believe it)
I said I know (there isn’t a reason)
You know I know (it’s only a feeling)

When I look back on it now
Remember mixed up I got
Before they got me sorted out
All that heart-in-my-mouth
All that head-filled-with-doubt
It’s fading out
I hardly think about it now

They say that I’ll go to college
And you will stay home
And watch while I’m leaving
The cold will just creep in
Oh, Jason, I know”