In an intriguing lengthy interview with Drowned in Sound this week, Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff offered an explanation for why he leaves a handful of excellent songs off their albums, such as I Am Very Far B-sides “Mermaid” and “Weave Room Blues” — the latter of which is shown in the clip above, performed unplugged in Paris recently: “When I’m sequencing a record,” he said, “I usually think in terms of the way all the songs will work together instead of which are the most accessible songs. Sometimes I think this tendency has hurt our commercial prospects…”
Not that “Weave Room Blues” is a radio-ready single (despite those catchy “ooh, la la la la”s) by any means, but it’s a fine tune — with brilliantly haunting lyrics — worth noting no less. Sheff also played this non-album cut alongside Patrick Pestorius for BBC Radio’s Loose Ends, streaming below: