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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“Tonight's the Night”

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."