"One was named Laurie, that’s what the story said next week in the Guardian."

Robot Mark recently posted about Okkervil River and damn if For Real ain't a catchy tune, even if I'm sure I've heard it before recently (Radio 3 or Zoe Radio?).

But it was good enough to send me to their site, digging through the sample singles they've offered up, and one of the older ones really caught my attention. Westfall is a first person narrative of a young murderer, imprisoned, recalling the events that lead to his incarceration. So it begs to be compared to Springsteen's Nebraska, but it stands on its own, starts spare and dark with an acoustic guitar then the mandolin, oh yeah, and evokes its own sense of pathos. Yeah, I dig the dark country ballad.