The sixth album from this Texas sextet opens wide on "the valley of the rock & roll dead," frontman Will Sheff baying in anguish over a booming backbeat. Past records may have favored a more literal approach, but I Am Very Far is dense and hallucinatory roots music: "We Need a Myth" is lavished in baroque strings, "Hanging From a Hit" is wobbly with reverb, and "Rider," with its pounding pianos, has the fevered gallop of an apocalyptic horseman. Their meaning remains tantalizingly elusive. All that's clear in Far is that something wicked is on its way. That its shape can't be discerned only makes the album more sinister.

Listen to Okkervil River's "Show Yourself":

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“Jimbrowski”

Jungle Brothers sampled, among other things, jazz, James Brown and house music. The New York crew's lyrics were equally diverse but never short on clever wordplay or a playful sense of humor, as exemplified by this song from 1988's Straight Out the Jungle. "The idea for that came at the end of a studio session, with Mike, me, Red Alert and a woman Red was dating at the time," says the group’s Afrika Baby Bam. "Red was flirting with her and kept saying 'Jimbrowski' the whole night. Mike and I wrote the rhymes on the way back from the subway."