At its best, music can magically teleport you back to your youth and nail a day, emotion, mood, life-changing event – or even an aroma – more succinctly and powerfully than any other art form.
This is exactly what songwriter Will Shelf is trying to achieve, who by the way is not to be confused with that other writer fella caught shooting up heroin on John Major’s private jet. The Silver Gymnasium is the seventh album from Okkervil River, a band from Austin, Texas named after a short story by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s granddaughter Tatiana.
Shelf has made a career out of making concept albums with a novelist’s eye for detail. Indeed their most recent studio outing was remarkable for being the first non-concept album they’ve ever done. On The Silver Gymnasium, however, they let the concept cloud the end result too much. This is supposed to be an album about Shelf’s teenage years, but it glides by in a pleasantly jaunty jangle without ever properly probing their big idea.
Producer John Agnello, who’s worked with The Hold Steady and Sonic Youth, gives a nice Spingsteen-y sheen to things, and the record is pretty in places – but they never come close to the visceral power of the Boss when it comes to soulfully and truthfully documenting the trials and tribulations of growing up in a small town. Overall, The Silver Gymnasium is frustratingly slight.

Key Track: 'Down Down the Deep River'