Perhaps because of a perceived lack of glamour, tracheotomies have never featured prominently in song lyrics. Okkervil River’s ninth album seeks to address that historical oversight. Famous Tracheotomies poignantly recounts how singer Will Sheff underwent the procedure as a consequence of a near-death experience when he was one – “I was my parents’ only kid and they had lost two before that” – before he details how Gary Coleman, Mary Wells and Dylan Thomas had the same operation, all set against a backdrop of lushly orchestrated soft rock. Sheff finally gets to the 13-year-old Ray Davies, explaining how the experience would later inspire Waterloo Sunset, before its refrain is picked out on a synth. It’s a compelling and moving opener to In the Rainbow Rain, but nothing else here scales the same heights.
In places, the sombre mood and muted instrumentation of 2016’s Away have been superseded by sly humour (on Don’t Move Back to LA) or more upbeat arrangements, the likes of The Dream and the Light channelling Arcade Fire’s passion without getting bogged down in their bombast. But elsewhere, Love Somebody and Human Being Song are so unengaging and bland, they slip past wraith-like, without leaving a footprint.
