Black Sheep Boy Appendix is an even stronger set than the universally lauded long-player it appends. Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River's fourth full-length which was released in April, relates a dark and intimate mythology (a belief as firmly based on six months spent staring at a poster of the album art as the music on the album - if you've seen the frightful allegory, you know what we mean). While the original record constructs a cinematic narrative track by track, its Appendix conveys the same as filtered through Lewis Carroll's opiated looking glass: more sinister and more beautiful, it's like a David Lynch movie cut during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Appendix touts more adventurous productions that form a conceptual daisychain across seven songs, in which even interstitials like the instrumental "A Forest" is both riveting and gorgeous. The mini-album's more intense focus and stronger unity are no accident, as its press materials confirm that Appendix is a maximalist "do-over," an opportunity Okkervil mastermind Will Sheff used to "exhaust and destroy" the harrowing themes of Black Sheep Boy. But just as Robert Smith failed to destroy The Cure by creating Pornography, Sheff only succeeds in making diamonds ("No Key, No Plan," in particular) when trying to reduce the original music to coals.

Jay Breitling
November 29, 2005