Devotional Number One begins: a roughly textured and crude recording of Roky Erickson strumming a guitar in a somber fashion, his voice young and mostly audible. You can hear doors open and close, a footstep or two, various incidental noises and the hiss of antiquated tape subtly dissipate under the swells of Okkervil River’s instrumental visitation, this young and lonesome Erickson, back then, a resident at Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
Erickson’s tale has been mostly tragic, his dealings with law, mental health and drugs an ongoing battle since his days with The 13th Floor Elevators. ‘Love Cast Out All Evil‘, his first recorded output in fourteen years, finds Erickson a victorious soul coming to grips, in as sincere a way possible, with his life. “Electricity hammered me through my head/Till nothin’ at all is backward instead,” he sings in Ain’t Blues Too Sad, addressing his days at Rusk and his regimen of electroshock therapy. He’s unapologetic and honest, his mind a healthier place and his baggage something to survey and consider.
‘Love Cast Out All Evil’ is comprised of twelve songs, selected by Okkervil River singer/songwriter Will Sheff. Acting as the album’s producer, Sheff sifted through sixty songs and old recordings that Erickson had written over the years, crafting the found sounds of a life in turmoil and its subsequent healing. With Okkervil River as his back up, Erickson ably revisits his old material, impassioned rock moments like Goodbye Sweet Dreams or John Lawman, and country ballads like Be and Bring Me Home and Love Cast Out All Evil seamlessly tied together.
In an effort to perfectly convey the album’s autobiographical tone, Sheff does experiment with recorded snippets that feature some of the background noise from the state hospital, a flurry of crowded nonsense at one point streaming across the middle of Please Judge. Sheff does bring the point home that Erickson is a soul in recovery, but as the album is already book-ended by two of Erickson’s Rusk recordings, Devotional Number One and God Is Everywhere, it does seem like overkill.
But, that’s a tiny flaw, if you would even call it that. Erickson’s voice is so captivating anyway it’s difficult to think of Sheff or Okkervil River as having any true presence in the album. That of course isn’t to say that the band is doing a bad job, but that they’re doing what they’re supposed to: backing the man up as he spins his stories of woe and redemption, which, as always, are too good to pass up.