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Okkervil River’s Will Sheff likens the follow-up to this year’s excellent Black Sheep Boy album to the strategy employed by the folks behind the 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula. After filming wrapped each day, the profit-minded producers schlepped in a Mexican director and a crew of Mexican actors and created a Spanish-language version of the vampire classic using the same sets and costumes. The analogy’s a bit off, since the Appendix is made up of tracks that were recorded during the original Black Sheep Boy sessions but didn’t make the cut, but Sheff’s point is that the seven-track EP reinterprets the core themes and ideas of Black Sheep Boy – lost (inner) children, alienation, loneliness, the abstract evil that lurks inside all of us – in a new frame. Sheff’s stunning songwriting is evident even on these castoff tracks, and there’s an increased emphasis on atmospheric arrangements (hissing static, toy piano, pump organ), particularly in eerie opening track Missing Children, that makes his dark roots-rock tales of malevolent drifters and lovers on the lam all the more captivatingly creepy.
