Will Sheff–leader of the long-running indie rock group Okkervil River—has shared “Nothing Special,” the title track from his debut solo release out October 7 via ATO Records.
With the clarity and melodic elegance of a traditional ballad, “Nothing Special” takes the listener on a journey through a swirling landscape of youthful ambition, death, and dissolution, and a surrender into belonging. Acoustic guitar lines intertwine, drums shamble, and synths swell as Sheff sings with hard-won wisdom about accepting loss, making peace with pain, and finding a place in the world. The track features a video directed by John Paul Horstmann.
In a new profile at Vanity Fair, Sheff delves deep into the personal circumstances that informed the creation of Nothing Special, what prompted him to put a record out under his own name, and his mental reframing of what rock and roll is.
“I think rock and roll is all about Led Zeppelin trashing the hotel room,” he says in the piece. “It’s not about the maid who works three jobs and has to come in and clean the hotel room afterwards. That was another thing that I realized—we have this image of the sexy, bad-boy pirate, crashing through the world and destroying things and leaving this path in his wake. But it’s only a certain kind of person who even is allowed to be that, and it is kind of gross.”
Produced by Sheff and recorded over three different sessions with John Congleton (St. Vincent, The War On Drugs), Matt Linesch (Edward Sharpe, Gil Landry), and Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers, Conor Oberst), Nothing Special finds Sheff operating on an idiosyncratic yet intuitive internal logic. Through these eight expansive, convention-defying songs, Sheff incorporates a fluid yet surprising array of influences–baroque pop, blurred-lens synth ballads, sci-fi psychedelia, 1970s and 80s ECM Records releases–to his carefully crafted narratives and searching anthems.
Released earlier this month, lead single “Estrangement Zone” stakes out some of this new territory. Stereogum, in naming “Estrangement Zone” one of the Best Songs Of The Week, described it as “an anxious parable about society’s decline that somehow manages to sound futuristic and ramshackle all at once.”
Will Sheff has also announced national headlining tour dates in support of Nothing Special, including a special Los Angeles release show on October 7 at the Masonic Lodge @ Hollywood Forever.
