In “Devastation,” the second song off his second solo album, Will Sheff quotes Otis Redding for at least the second time this century. “This is my lover’s prayer,” he sings, and it’s impossible to think he doesn’t grasp the reference (Redding released “My Lover’s Prayer” in 1966) or that Sheff didn’t intend it. The great Southern soul singer appeared in one of Okkervil River’s first great songs, 2002’s “Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas,” and he shows up again here in a song about the weight of history, both personal and communal. “Devastation” is full of Easter eggs and allusions, including one to Francis Barraud’s famous gramophone painting (His Master’s Voice), but the song is never merely clever or simply self-referential. There’s some angst and worry in there, especially in the idea that he can’t sing one note without referring to another note he’s sung before. How do you break free of your own past? Can you break free? Do you have to annihilate everything in order to begin anew? “Devastation shaking loose every dirty bit of history,” he sings like a chant or a summoning incantation.
Extra Mile is not quite as dramatic nor nearly as destructive as “Devastation” might suggest, but it’s a clean break from Okkervil River, which means it sounds more like a solo debut than Sheff’s solo debut, 2022’s Nothing Special. That album was recorded with members of his long-running band, specifically guitarist Will Graefe and bassist Benjamin Lazar Davis, but Sheff slapped his own name on the spine at the last minute, as he wrote in a recent statement, “to get out from under the weight of ambition and excess and frustrations and tragedies that the words ‘Okkervil River’ had accrued for me.” But Nothing Special still sounded like the kind of record his band might make. Despite using the same crew and working even more closely with Graefe and Davis (who get songwriting credits), Extra Mile is notably different.
Everything on the album sounds like it’s floating in space: the Major Tom acoustic guitar strums, the Fantastic Planet synths, even the ’70s backing vocals on “Devastation.” Featuring contributions from Christian Lee Hutson, A.C. Newman, and Thor Harris, among others, it’s Sheff’s vibiest album, which allows his songs to move in different ways. “Funny Feeling” doesn’t rumble to its climax, but swells and bulges psychedelically; the band’s patience feeds its cosmic majesty. Sheff sings in a high, hoarse croak that sounds warmer and more inviting than the phrase “high, hoarse croak” might suggest. There’s a desperation in his voice, a weariness that evokes bad nights’ sleep and endless doomscrolling, but there’s also a delicacy to his performance, a gentleness that has precedent in his catalog but still feels new. On “Double Exposure,” he admits to waking up, grabbing his phone, and grimacing at all the fresh new hells that await. “It doesn’t take much for a touch of the tears to start rolling,” he confesses, sounding resigned yet resolute, as though feeling shitty about our shitty country sure beats feeling nothing. “It’s wonderful, feeling it. I don’t want to lose this.”
Because Sheff has made so many conceptually knotty albums, it’s tempting to read some larger notion into Extra Mile, to imagine he has consciously chosen to make a second solo album that sounds like a debut. Such is the burden of history, where everything you’ve ever done becomes context for everything you’ll ever do. Extra Mile ends with “Ancient Tourist,” which features a choir of Patreon supporters and what sounds like an actual punchline: “I hum a holy hymn to nothing special,” Sheff declares, as the band approximate a rimshot. The humor in that line is disarmingly good-natured, maybe even celebratory. Sheff is still looking for a place where he can evade his history, where he can sing about a lover’s prayer without invoking Otis Redding, but at the very least he’s learned to enjoy the search.
