They thought he was down and out. Washed up, stricken asunder by all those phantasms percolating inside that addled mind. But Roky’s back with his first album in fourteen years and it’s even more beautiful than 1995’s oh-sotender All That May Do My Rhyme.
From the viscous black clouds that threatened to engulf him – drug addiction; chronic schizophrenia; internment spells in a mental asylum; involuntary electroconvulsive shock treatment; a divorce from his childhood sweetheart and separation from his son – Erickson has emerged (due, in no small part, to the considerable care and attention of his younger brother, Sumner), happier than he’s been in a long time and back doing what he does best. He’s reunited with his family, too.
This album inevitably draws on all that past darkness, navigating the most tumultuous aspects of Erickson’s troubled life, but without recourse to the metaphorical veils that characterised so much of his early solo career. Roky wants the listener to be under no illusions as to what he’s been through: isolation, illness, obscurity and rebirth, it’s all here – the passionately honest kernels at this work’s core. By glancing back, resuscitating forgotten and unreleased compositions formed during time spent dwelling in the murkiest shadows, the songs themselves become allegoric; everevolving testaments to the kind of resilience (climaxing in a splendid resurrection) that would have destroyed a lesser man.
Much of the praise that will inevitably be heaped upon True Love… should go to producer Will Sheff and his group, Okkervil River, whose devotion to this project is evident in their meticulous, diary-like approach, delving into Erickson’s past via original archival recordings and home video snippets. But, just as importantly, the troupe knows when to take a back seat, aware of their role as extras and props in this remarkable drama. With tantalisingly subtle touches, such as the ghostly organ ascension concluding Devotional Number One (the basic track was recorded during Erickson’s time at Austin, Texas’ Rusk State Hospital For The Criminally Insane), the field recordings lifted from Erickson’s home library scattered throughout and occasional flourishes of luminescent strings, the group fashion ornate frames for these deeply personal snapshots. They’ve also managed to do what Rick Rubin did for Cash (though, unlike the Man In Black during his last years, Roky’s voice retains all its primal power), by re-contextualising an undoubted genius, positioning their muse for imminent embrace by the next generation of devotees, while more than pacifying the old guard.
There’s a quasi-spiritual power at play here (check the poignant reading of Please Judge or the blistering guttural garage rock of John Lawman), quivering with the wrought raw emotion of their chief architect, while demonstrating the deft arrangements of Erickson’s young wards.
Simply put, True Love Cast Out All Evil is Erickson’s finest suite of songs, bejewelled orphans charting a turbulent and, often, violent past, infused with love, hope and spiritual grace: inspirational hymnals broadcast straight from the heart, directed by an optimistic soul that refused to be denied.
