Okkervil River's last album was 2013's The Silver Gymnasium. Will Sheff is back this year with Away, out September 9 via ATO. He recorded the new album at a Long Island studio on the same Neve 8068 console that recorded Steely Dan’s Aja and John Lennon’s Double Fantasy. The album features contributions from Marissa Nadler, Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg (formerly a member of Okkervil River), the classical ensemble yMusic, and more. Sheff talked about the album's creation in a statement: 2013-2015 had been a strange time for me. I lost some connections in a music industry that was visibly falling apart. Some members of the backing band left, moving on to family life or to their own projects. I spent a good deal of time in hospice sitting with my grandfather, who was my idol, while he died. I felt like I didn’t know where I belonged. When there was trouble at home, a friend offered me her empty house in the Catskills where I could go and clear my head. New songs were coming fast up there, so I set myself the challenge of trying to write enough to make a whole record. I didn’t really think about what the record was going to be or if I’d even release it—the idea was just to write quickly and directly. Eventually, I realized I was kind of writing a death story for a part of my life that had, buried inside of it, a path I could follow that might let me go somewhere new
