Roky Erickson with Okkervil River, True Love Cast Out All Evil (2010)

This is Okkervil River as you've never heard them before, and this collaboration with Roky Erickson is surely them at their very best. Occasionally psychedelic, often low-fi, and unashamedly Texan, this collaborative album is made up of 12 previously-unreleased tracks by Roky Erickson, and is clearly something of a gritty process of catharsis for him. It's a reflective, redemptive album - I'm sure it's no coincidence the album is bookended by raw, blazing devotionals written by Erickson during a period of incarceration. 'Ain't Blues Too Sad' gave me chills all over, and 'Be and Bring Me Home' is no less affecting. This is a brutally honest, inspired album, which in my view only adds to its charm.

I love this album first and foremost because it's a country album (witness the foot stomper 'Bring Back the Past', and the softer but no-less-awesome 'Forever'). It's chock full of spectacular songs written by Erickson over a long and turbulent career; songs which really did deserve to be released rather than a collection of unworthy B Sides, and Okkervil River give Erikson's music a take on life that must surely do it justice. There's a lot of debate about the sincerity of this album, and whether O River were the best band to collaborate with. There's little doubt that their input into the album helps to make it the stunning listen that it is. But my interest lies not necessarily in what O River can do for Roky Erickson, but what Roky Erickson does for O River. Like all good ventures of this kind, it's my sincere belief that each side in this clever collaboration brings out the best in the other - I genuinely feel that Roky Erickson's music has brought out something beautiful in O River that I have always thought them capable of but that they never quite achieved alone: to make a beautiful, unashamed country album, and to embrace their Texan roots. It might not necessarily have taken Okkervil River to help Roky Erickson make a commercially popular album, but there can be no doubt that it took Roky Erickson to help O River make a rawly Texan album and I love him for bringing that out in them.

This is an album of blisteringly good music, a journey, and a disarmingly sincere offering in humility. Erickson is front and centre of the project, and his music is treated by O River with with respect and care. The result is something really quite special.