Results tagged “okkervilriver”

SPORTS: Join Red Bull Street Style today at the Great Hall for the National Street Style Finals. Sixteen soccer-trick stars will compete to become Canada's freestyle soccer champion, with the winner advancing to the Red Bull Street Style Worlds Finals next month in Brazil. The Great Hall (1087 Queen Street West), 3:30 p.m., FREE.

Will Sheff's voice sounds something like Imogen Heap's (you know, the woman who sings "Hide and Seek") stripped of every bit of sheen. Sheff jumps octaves as often and with as much animation, though the results are rougher, darker, uglier––more appropriate to sing about, say, killing people, or to take the character of a man about to commit suicide or the ashamed father of a porn star. Throw in a trumpet, guitar or two, organ, piano, and drums, and you've got the makings of Austin's Okkervil River, a band so filled with joyous hate that it's impossible for their music not to constantly verge on catharsis. And you've got the reason why the band easily sold out Lee's Palace on Friday night.

Finally, another excuse to write about La Blogothèque's Take-Away Shows. The last time we covered the France-based music filmmakers, they were psyching us up for the Arcade Fire's May concert with the best concert footage we've ever seen of the band. Before that, they won us over with The Hidden Cameras parading along boardwalks. Now they've given us Owen Pallett plucking away at two songs––"Your Light Is Spent" (above) and "Horsetail Feathers"––in Paris. If you've always wanted to hear "Your Light Is Spent" sung by an out-of-breath Owen running down a Paris street to avoid the noise from traffic, consider your wish fulfilled.

If you were one of the many Arcade Fire fans not lucky enough to grab tickets to one of the band's Massey Hall shows on May 15 and 16, we can but offer two paltry consolation prizes.

. The lyrical mastermind behind Okkervil River (named for a short story by Leo Tolstoy's granddaughter - told you they were literate) is Will Sheff, who also gives Okkervil its rich, plaintive, emotion-drenched voice.