The Silver Gymnasium isn’t nostalgic—it’s factual. It’s real. It all happened and can’t again. And that is magical: “We can never go back. We can only remember.”
I’m not sure if I’d call it a completely happy album, as there’s still darkness creeping around the edges, and also because it defies simplification. And yet maybe that’s the point. Okkervil River wanted to create something that was accessible. They wanted to create something that had warmth.
For the most part, Silver Gymnasium makes for an uplifting and triumphant listen, with a positive energy running through the music and the melodies.
Unlike the labored Very Far, this time the songs seem to pour out of Sheff, fueling the band’s jauntiest, peppiest record since 2007’s The Stage Names.
Sheff has succeeded in capturing a specific time and place. It puts you in his world and lets you feel a time when things felt new, with all of the potential and promise that life held before it reared its ugly head.
We already knew that they could write and play grand and anthemic songs, but this album finds them going all-out in swashbuckling revelry for the most part, and it suits them better than anyone might have expected.
While the music often shows a strength and hope, The Silver Gymnasium is largely a heartbreaking record.
Sheff's willingness to strike a balance between his roots rock past and his personal past should please longtime fans and newbies alike, even if they spend the majority of the ride wondering why the tour bus never actually stops at the Silver Gymnasium.
As a whole, it splits the difference between an impossible past and a lost future, churning up a rich emotional froth that — like the best of 80s pop itself — seems by turns angry, giddy, and seriously tragic.
On ...Gymnasium, Sheff frontloads the album with some of the catchiest songs he’s ever written.
On The Silver Gymnasium, however, they rarely let the cracks and strains show, and the songs suffer considerably. There’s little menace or madness here; instead the music gives the false impression of emotional orderliness.
New label, old habits. Anthemic, power-pop that invites the sunshine from the main entrance to warm the anxiety.
#1 | / | MAGNET |
#6 | / | Sputnikmusic |
#20 | / | PopMatters |
#22 | / | Paste |
#26 | / | Consequence of Sound |
#43 | / | Uncut |
#87 | / | Under the Radar |