Watch: Okkervil River – Love to a Monster (Live Festival Session)

The mornings are dark and cold, and the days are dark and cold, and the nights are dark and cold. Ladies and gentlemen, winter is, without doubt, upon us. But those of you with particularly long memories will remember that it wasn’t always this way — not so very long ago it was summertime, which in England is a three-week spell reserved for sunshine, frolics and, most importantly, festivals.

Way back in September, we invited Texan rockers Okkervil River to record a secret session out in the beautiful woodland surroundings of Dorset’s End of the Road festival, an invitation which the band duly accepted.

Originally hidden away on Okkervil’s 2006 Australian tour EP Overboard and Down, ‘Love to a Monster’ is something of a lost gem in Okkervil’s canon, and their rendition of it here is near pitch-perfect. One of Will Sheff’s greatest strengths as a songwriter has always been his slight of hand, his illusionist-esque ability to make you look one way while he performs something amazing elsewhere. Here, the lilting mandolin, the jangling tamborine, and Sheff’s simple chord progression sell you a gentle alt-folk number, while his lyrics – which start as an earnest break-up song (“I wouldn’t be able to bear the way you cannot love me”) and quickly descend into the titular monster revelling in domestic violence (“I hope your new man thinks of me when he sees what a number I did on you”) – are where the real magic is performed. The late afternoon sunshine filtering through the canopy and the jovial festival crowd add a further depth to the song’s eerie atmosphere, and help highlight not only the genius of Okkervil River, but the wonderful environment End of the Road creates for performers and fans alike.