Will Sheff (Photo courtesy Shore Fire Media)
Will Sheff — known for his work with his acclaimed indie rock project Okkervil River — released his debut solo album Nothing Special on ATO Records earlier this month.
In November, Will embarks on a tour that includes a show at Black Cat in DC on Tuesday, Nov. 15.
Produced by Sheff and recorded over three different sessions with John Congleton (St. Vincent, The War On Drugs), Matt Linesch (Edward Sharpe, Gil Landry), and Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers, Conor Oberst), Nothing Special finds Will reprocessing his sense of self, reflecting on misguided past ambitions, and reclaiming his sense of purpose.
It’s an album that consolidates Sheff’s considerable strengths as a songwriter — deft poeticism, earnest and earned emotionality, a knack for melodic catharsis — and casts them onto a broad and unhurried sonic architecture. Like the album’s artwork, it finds Sheff gazing out into the expanse and witnessing the possibilities that await.
Watch the official music video for “The Spiral Season” by Will Sheff on YouTube:
Said Sheff about “The Spiral Season”:
“The Spiral Season” went through many incarnations. It was a fantasy narrative, and then an autobiography of myself, and then it turned into an autobiography of a 16th century magician, and then I opened the window and all of those ideas flew out and the California landscape came crashing in with all its grandeur and its vulnerability, and fireworks went off and the moon rose overhead and Benjamin Lazar Davis and I wrote a big shouty chorus and everything finally started to make sense. And then we went into the studio and everybody played it wonderfully, and Will Graefe jumped in with that soaring guitar solo that we just let run out as long as it needed to be because it felt so good.”
Will Sheff
W/ Mmeadows
Black Cat
Tuesday, Nov. 15
Doors @ 7:30pm
$25
All ages