New on Nerve, 9.18.07: "It's my duty to talk about sex."

Sarah — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:31:00 GMT

This morning we have an interview with Will Sheff, lead singer of Okkervil River by Sarah Hepola. The Nerve Insider is a huge fan of Okkervil River, and the interview does not disappoint. Sheff is thoughtful, insightful and extremely appealing.

At the beginning of the piece Sheff orders a sandwich from Subway. Sarah didn't put this in the article, but he told her, “I want this interview to be really good, let me finish this sandwich and call you back.”

Other tidbits that didn't make it in the piece:

"One thing about will is that he's a movie fanatic, and he's pretty encyclopedic in his knowledge. I used to write about film for The Austin Chronicle, and we actually asked him to contribute to the film section. The articles are published under his full name, Will Robinson Sheff. Here's a link to the archive of his work.

Also, during the interview, we had a funny conversation about his working at video stores. He told me he'd been fired from his job at I Love Video, another famous indie movie enclave in Austin, and I asked why. This is what he said:

WS: Because I was incompetent. I forgot to open the store one day. What can you do? Musicians. But this one girl was really gunning to get me fired, too. She wanted to see me go down.

ME: Do you think she just wanted your space on the employee pick's wall?

WS: Yeah, she wanted to fill it up with vampire movies.'" -- Sarah Hepola

From the interview, Will Sheff on...

Trashy TV:
I think low culture is all culture. Rock and roll is low culture that has been elevated to high culture. There is something so boring about the idea that something must be an opera or an etching to matter. It's all human beings trying to connect, trying to understand one another.

Porn:
It's the most simple art imaginable: It's people and sex. You might throw in costumes and a storyline, but that's not what people rented it for, or downloaded it for. They downloaded the porn to see people fucking. There's so much debate about what it means. All it means is what it is.

I think rock and roll is supposed to be about sex. It's my duty to talk about sex, just a little bit. Especially in indie rock, because there's this trend toward kind of fetishizing childishness and being freaking out by sex. But the songs that I loved, the David Bowie and Iggy Pop, those songs were all about sex.

Groupies:
That was a big theme, yeah. I guess I'm trying to look at people who are such big fans of art that they would throw their lives away. And they're such big fans that art becomes sexual. This is your way to interact with this person, that you want to have sex with them.

His sad songs:
I don't think of the songs as being sad. I think of them as being ecstatic. Like having a blended sadness and happiness and poured on in enormous quanities. I like the idea of these strong emotional states, for those things to be present at once, that there is something jumbled in the way they co-exist.

"It's just a life story, so there's no climax."

Sarah — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:28:00 GMT

Today we're listening to... Okkervil River. They're from Austin and their new album "The Stage Names" came out on August 7. Their video for "Our Live is Not a Movie or Maybe" is a 70s style motel porn shoot.

Nerve Insider : okkervil river

New on Nerve, 9.18.07: "It's my duty to talk about sex."

"It's just a life story, so there's no climax."