Selected Press for Sleep and Wake-Up Songs EP:

Pitchfork Media

"The band...filled last year's eye-opening Down the River of Golden Dreams with gentle ballads about beds and war criminals and forgiveness, but the songs on their follow-up EP, Sleep and Wake Up Songs, are more brittle and fragile, like a light sleeper's snooze...its brevity makes it all the more emotionally forceful."
-Stephen Deusner

Selected Press for Down the River of Golden Dreams:

New York Times

September 2003:
"Down the River of Golden Dreams...lays clever, heartbreaking lyrics over simple, stirring chord progressions...Mr. Sheff uses a rickety voice to disguise wild ambition."
-Kelefa Sanneh

January 2004:
"Smart, catchy, near-perfect...Okkervil River prefers a more warbly, orchestrated approach (as on the beautiful, crescendoing 'It Ends with a Fall')."
-Neil Strauss

Rolling Stone
September 2003:

"Singer-songwriter Will Sheff of the haunted-country quartet Okkervil River is ready for worldwide renown. His ambitious melancholy on Down the River of Golden Dreams...would be impressive enough with just soft strum and Sheff’s vaporous tenor. But Okkervil River aspire to bigger cinema."
-David Fricke

Magnet

February 2004:
"We will float until we learn how to swim. Yes, that’s an In the Aeroplane Over the Sea reference, and yes, Okkervil River has that sort of mythical genius. Down the River... is a story of epic proportions - a battle with the enemies at hand that spirals into a confrontation of the demons within." 8th Best album of 2003.

December 2003:
"Musically, Okkervil River is all seduction. Down the River of Golden Dreams is flush with near-orchestral instrumentation. R.E.M.-style mandolin sparkes on 'Dead Faces,' vintage organs drive the waltzing 'Blanket and Crib,' and a chorus of horns rise like an ocean swell for the melancholy conclusion of 'Seas Too Far to Reach.'"
-Tizzy Asher

Entertainment Weekly
September 2003:

"A great storyteller with rhyme schemes that would impress Eminem, frontman Will Sheff comes on like Conor Oberst with a tighter grip on the reins."
-Will Hermes

CMJ New Music
October 2003:

"Sheff...sings the intricate stories of forlorn war criminals and unrepentant adulterers with a novelist’s aplomb, and takes the old-fashioned love song to epic proportions. 'Seas Too Far to Reach' is the anthem of a man who, in an effort to connect with his grieving girlfriend, imagines rounding up a troupe of shipmen to set sail on the ocean of her sighs. It’s a heroic and beautiful metaphor for the quest of growing up, and best of all, makes you want to sing along."
-Kara Zuaro

Blender
November 2003:

"The songs actually read like microbursts of serious literary energy, and hearing them unlocks poetry hidden on the page...The ornate acoustic backgrounds...are so sweepingly atmospheric that they balance singer Will Sheff, who howls like the Old 97s’ Rhett Miller at his most unhinged."
-John DeFore

Harp

"Sheff’s poetry is beautifully accompanied by his gently intuitive bandmates...The collective effect is that there’s not a wrong step anywhere on this record, except on the part of the listener unprepared for its greatness."
-Melanie Haupt

Alternative Press
September 2003:

"Frontman Will Sheff’s delicate voice and literary allusions...make this disc a gem."

Devil in the Woods
November 2003:

"Sheff spins his stories in a voice that alternates between a calmly detached low register and a captivating howl....An intense recording, its pristine arrangements married to stark tales of heavy-hearted characters stumbling through life. It’s clear that Okkervil River tackles music with an all-consuming passion."
-Rob Van Alstyne

Selected Press for "Satisfy You" / "Stark Miami Mines" (a split single with South San Gabriel):

Magnet
October/November issue, 2002:

"What can be done with the limited ingredients of emotive gloom-country never ceases to amaze… Okkervil River is Will Robinson Sheff’s coughing baby, and his roaring-violin-dappled song of devotion builds to the punchline that the speaker is paying his “spoiled rose” for love…This single is a must-own for when the creek’s dried up and you’ve blown the termite wings off your turntable."
-William Bowers

Selected Press for Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See:
more...

Rolling Stone
June 20 issue, 2002:

"In a crowded field of young spectral-country bands, Okkervil River pine and crawl with enriched instrumentation… and a gripping cross of drowsy understatement and lightning bolts of anxiety, like Pavement bursting through the middle of REM’s 'Country Feedback.' Singer-songwriter Will Robinson Sheff understands the medicinal properties of sadness...This album...can help you through the cold, lonesome blues."
-David Fricke

MOJO
February issue, 2002:

"Singing with both the raw-throated urgency of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and the melancholic intimacy of Will Oldham, Sheff’s first-person narratives create a world full of regrets, lost loves and broken hearts...Quality song-writing and storytelling...bittersweet poignancy."
-Andrew Carden

NME

"These tear-stricken homilies soothe with their warm orchestration (wurlitzers, mandolins, and pedal steel all help shade Okkervil River’s rustic gloom), while Sheff wrings many a wry grin from the depths of depression with the black-hearted humour which stalks these tracks. Like the most rowdy wake you never attended."
-Stevie Chick

Alternative Press:
Volume 16, Number 164

"A raggedly rocking avant-folk quartet...Okkervil River's stripped-down acoustic guitar, bass and drum arrangements are augmented by organ, mellotron, fiddle or the occasional blast of a horn section; and Sheff sings dark and tuneful odes to the dysfunctional... Okkervil River make falling apart sound good."
-Kevin Grasha

CMJ
January 28, 2002:

"Okkervil River writes songs…of stratospheric euphoria and bottomless depression…The sweep of the strings, the moan of the pedal steel and the melancholy yearn of harmonies…are the sounds of artful desperation…and the music's (slight) bounce affirms Okkervil's acknowledgement that this not a completely dark ride."
-Piotr Orlov

No Depression
November-December 2002:

"Through [the] dark Southern heartland comes Okkervil River, whose knack for murder ballads would make Johnny Cash cough and whose lyrical eye for detail is as sharp as the tips of Nick Cave’s winkle-pickers."
-Nath Bev

The Onion:
March 7-13 2002

"Influenced by the otherworldly slowcore of bands like Sparklehorse...Okkervil River's second album, Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See, fills its spaces with lovely and languid sounds."

Pitchfork Media:
April 2, 2002

"I don't know what you'd call their music-- alt-country or indie rock or avant-folk or some such crossbred super-genre...The songwriting is impressively poignant, and the music is as tight and comforting as any old noose...The record maintains a nice, lush air, but manages to stay somehow raucous simultaneously...Sheff can sound like a man who's been beaten back to a lost little boy...And the guys even bring in Daniel Johnston to duet on "Happy Hearts," just coming straight out and pleading for what we're all after: 'Unconditional love, why did you leave me?'"
-Chris Dahlen

Time Out New York:
July 11-18, 2002

"Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See takes a handsome tour of dainty Americana that recalls the music Neil Young makes when not battling feedback"

Tower Pulse:
March 2002

"Exquisite melodies...augmented with horns, strings, organs, whatever...Sad, funny and finely detailed songs [by] a shockingly dextrous young band...a splendid musical statement."
-Richard A. Martin

Comes with a Smile
#11, Autumn 2002:

"Okkervil River’s Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See came out of nowhere and seemed to contain everything that a great record should….There were songs that swung between the depths of despair and the pinnacles of ecstasy…but there was also the sound of the band, banjos, pedal steels and fiddles mixed with horns, Wurlitzer and other sounds to create a fully realized vision, uncategorisable…. In Will Robinson Sheff, here was a vocalist who, like Mark Eitzel, could articulate heart-wrenching pain, loneliness, despair and happiness in the swoop of a line, the cutting off of a breath. Sure to make many people’s end-of-year lists, Don't Fall in Love... is one of those records made for clutching tightly to your chest, for the long nights that never seem to end.”
-Stav Sherez

From NYC's Other Music update.
February 13, 2002:

"[Their] densely orchestrated pop swings with a purpose [and] covers a wide range of territory, from introspective, dark country musings, to emotive and exuberant pop...Singer Will Robinson Sheff...belts out densely lyrical passages that are both earnest and surreal. "Don't Fall in Love..." is a gorgeous and totally captivating debut."
-Phil Waldorf

Lazy-i/Omaha Weekly
February 27, 2002:

"Amazingly beautiful...more backwater than wheat field, with a nod toward slow bluegrass and dustbowl folk...Unlike so many of today's indie artists whose lyrics are almost purposely vague, Sheff's lyrics are like documentary-style poetry, telling perfect little stories that deal with longing and loss, fear and coping, hope and regret."
-Tim McMahan

Dream Magazine.
January 2002:

"This is wonderful; full of wonder and real feeling...Colored by dirt roads, folk forms and pop music as an artform. Mandolins shimmer like campfire light, and the sounds range from quiet whispers to outright outspoken...Haunted and human, with wit and plenty of stories to tell, and lives to glimpse in passing."

Pulse of the Twin Cities:
February 6, 2002

"Okkervil River's stunning sophomore release...is a truly sprawling work that's never afraid to hyperextend itself in the hopes of attaining something better than the pedestrain indie-rock it will no doubt be filed next to on record store shelves...Sheff's songs of regret and loss are frequently punctuated by bouts of riveting vocal spasms that mark him as a unique and unforgettably expressive singer."
- Rob Van Alstyne

The Austin Chronicle:
March 15, 2002

"Okkervil's new release, Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See , [is] a richly instrumented collection of songs that filter all manner of American music through a keen and unforgiving songwriter's mind. This is folk like you haven't heard it before -- ominous but accessible...The scarier side of folk and bluegrass has never been so appealing. Don't Fall in Love With Everyone You See grows on you like Spanish moss, beautifully, overwhelmingly, undeniably, and possibly fatally. Enjoy it at your own risk."
-Christopher Hess

"Balancing poetic lines with an undeniable emotional investment...Sheff infus[es] each word, each phrase with a splash from the cauldron of passion lurking underneath. At key moments, that passion bubbles over and Okkervil River hits full stride."
-Michael Chamy

The Austin American-Statesman:
March 13, 2002

"Okkervil River songwriter Will Robinson Sheff hates being compared to another Will, Palace's Mr. Oldham. And well he should, after he went to the trouble of dragging all that beautiful sadness out of Oldham's backwoods shack, and into a sun-dappled room where the emotionally wronged can get up and dance — on the band's up-tempo songs, that is. Elsewhere, the band slows the beat down to the speed of a contemplated suicide, as the narrator of "My Bad Days" paints desperation with the most perfect imagery this side of Richard Buckner."
-John DeFore

The Austin Chronicle,
March 3, 2000:

"In their short life as our town's new standard bearers for the folk-rock implosion, they've managed to skate that elusive thin line between utter joy and unbearable pain and turn it into manifesto...Sheff seems to channel the brutal honesty and whispered wallowing of a young Alex Chilton circa Big Star's 'Kanga Roo' or 'Holocaust.'"
-Kate X. Messer

"A remarkable mix of frenetic stringwork and smart, narrative lyrics, the songs a constant challenge to the senses and sensibilities of the attentive."
- Christopher Hess

Salt For Slugs:

"A seven song DIY release with much integrity... Good lyrics, great musicianship, awesome band. Good things will happen to these guys."
-- brian