The last couple of weeks, Mac has posted about the new singles from Neko Case and Okkervil River, wherein he joked that I might have fainted upon hearing that both acts were releasing new albums on September 3. He was actually, probably, understating my reaction. Neko Case and Will Sheff are two of the most talented, and completely underrated, songwriters working in music today and finding out that we’d be getting an album’s worth of new material from both of them, on the precipice of "my favorite season," is some of the best news I’ve received in a year already fraught with good news re: music.

Okkervil River is, without a doubt, my “favorite” band. I could write for days about Sheff’s poetic lyricism, the over-arching thematic concepts of their albums, their classic folk-rock melodicism, and a band, that despite featuring a rotating cast of Austin-based musicians, is consistently flawless. Case (who some might know as a perennial contributor to the New Pornographers, but who you all should also know as a brilliant solo artist in her own right, as well as a highly enjoyable Twitter-follow) is gifted not only with a heart-stopping voice but an incredible talent for telling dark, country-noir stories from a variety of perspectives.

These new songs from Case and Sheff exhibit what they do so well in their capacity as songwriters. Both songs happen to rip gender stereotypes up by the roots and place their narrators in positions that are refreshing and unexpected.


On “Man,” Case, who is, assuredly, a beautiful 42-year-old woman, sings of being a “man” in no uncertain terms. She immediately lets the listener know what type of “man” she’s referring to here. This isn’t an “identify crisis.” She’s talking about all of the stereotypes and trappings that go along with being “the man” in any particular situation, where “man” refers not just to actual, sexual “gender,” but a status. A position of power and confidence that could potentially be adopted by a human born with female parts just as easily as the more traditional masculine figure.

On her last album, Case did a terrific job of telling stories from a number of points of view, between an “animal,” a “tornado” and a “man eater,” proving that existing in a particular condition shouldn’t necessarily limit a songwriter to writing from a particular perspective. The cross-dressing photo that accompanies the song on the official video feed sets the mood for the point of view here. We’re talking about the “man’s man,” fit with cowboy hat, mustache and lighter. This isn’t the “runt of the litter.”  There’s no “proxy” here. You’ll deal with her (or “him”) directly.

In a world where English pronouns like “him” and “her” are (slowly) becoming increasingly interchangeable and meaningless, it’s a smart and straight-forward piece of assertiveness where you can almost see the “men” in the room struggling to argue: “but you’re not… but… you… but…” Case’s assumption of the persona seems to be equal parts mocking  (“a woman’s heart, is the watermark, by which I measure everything”) and empowering (“you didn’t know what a man was, until I showed you.”)

This boldly adopted point-of-view does an affecting job of describing the conflicts that arise when a “woman” attempts to assert herself in the realm of “men” (and, like writing, and comedy, and other forms of entertainment, the music industry is still generally a predominantly male-centric world where women are marginalized as being “cute” or as novelty acts.)

You'll be able to find this song on Case's new album, which is brilliantly titled "The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You."

On Okkervil River’s newest song, “It Was My Season,” Will Sheff takes a much more subtle approach to exploring an atypical songwriting perspective.


Of note is the fact that Sheff has revealed that Okkervil’s new album, The Silver Gymnasium, will “take place in 1986 in a small town in New Hampshire.” (If you’re a geek for conceptual, literary folk-rock, that alone should be enough to make your day.)

The song tells a fairly straightforward story about a couple struggling through a not-entirely-identifiable adversity. A few things are clear though: we’re definitely in the 80’s (see: “can you hear his VCR weeping?” and “below the Atari, well I could feel your heart was just going.”) and some sort of clandestine, amorous situation is afoot (see: “our parents were freaking” and “what was I thinking?” and “we’ll meet on the weekend, your dad won’t be home.”)

The first person in the song seems to be romantically involved with someone of potentially lesser social stature (“come out of your trailer, and into the dark!”) who has a stern father with a military background (“they crossed his wires completely, when they made him fire that gun.”) There also seem to be some “stakes” here if the couple is eventually found out; possibly that they’ll be separated from each other if they’re not careful (“if they take me out of school, you out of town.”) It’s in the last lines of the song though where the narrative is suddenly flipped on its head and the listener is forced to re-visit everything they've just heard.

“They say that I’ll go to college, and you will stay home, and watch while I’m leaving, and the cold will just creep in… oh, Jason, I know.”

The final line of the song isn't placed in quotes (as Sheff is known to do when switching perspectives mid-song), which would lead one to believe that it’s the narrator who is lamentably singing to “Jason” before the song abruptly ends. This likely leads us to one of two conclusions: that the narrator is female, or the narrator is a gay male. Either way, it’s an incredibly fun twist on which to end the song, which would have been perfectly enjoyable even without a last-second revelation about the identity of the narrator.

Sheff has certainly sung from the perspective of females in the past, in part, on “Hanging From a Hit,” and in full, on “(Shannon Wilsey on the) Starry Stairs” and “On Tour With Zykos.” If this is the case for “It Was Our Season,” then Sheff continues to be one of the few songwriters that seem secure, or simply imaginative, enough to write songs as a male from a female perspective. It’s possible that hearing the song in the context of the full album may reveal the complete story. However, at this point, I’m actually leaning toward the second theory of a gay male narrator, which makes things even more interesting.

There certainly seems to be a sense of urgency between the narrator and “Jason.” It could just be because they’re young and naïve but it seems to be something even more than that: the secretive nature of the relationship, the high stakes, the vague sense of regret upon the couple going their separate ways toward the end of the story. It’s the second-to-last section of the song that really supports this interpretation for me though. While the band harmonizes a repeated set of lines, Sheff, as the narrator, begins singing of “looking back on it now” and remembering “how mixed up he got,” before they “got him sorted out.” He then states that “it’s fading out” and he “hardly thinks about it now” before landing on the final piano-driven set of lyrics in which he tells Jason that he “knows.”

We know that this is the lead-off track on The Silver Gymnasium, and without more, it’s pretty difficult to guess where this is all going. At the moment, however, it certainly seems like it might be going in the direction of a man (or woman) who was once in love with a man, and has seemingly moved on from that part of their life for reasons unknown.

I know that it's the first day of summer, and I'm all for enjoying it. But I also kind of can't wait for September to get here.