Sand Pebbles - Thousand Wild Flowers Audio CD

Thousand Wild Flowers album One of the most remarkable things about Roky Erickson's collaboration with Okkervil River, 2010's True Love Cast Out All Evil, is the simple fact it exists at all. The story of Erickson's long struggle to regain his physical and mental health has been told often enough by now, and even after making a nearly miraculous recovery and returning to the concert stage sounding strong, fiery, and confident, it was anyone's guess if Erickson still had a good record left in him. Thankfully, Erickson's manager, Darren Hill, had the idea of pairing Erickson with Okkervil River in the studio, and the match proved to be both surprising and inspired. True Love Cast Out All Evil is easily the most ambitious and imaginative album to carry Erickson's name since the 13th Floor Elevators' Easter Everywhere, and it's a bold, evocative effort to present Erickson's music in a fresh context. Rather than mimic the sound of the Elevators or Erickson's solo work of the 1970s and '80s, Okkervil's Will Sheff (who produced the sessions) has used Erickson's songs as the centerpiece of an elaborate aural collage that transforms these 12 tunes into a cycle that runs in intriguing parallels to the dominant themes of Roky's life and music. True Love Cast Out All Evil begins and ends with augmented versions of amateur recordings Erickson made during his stay at the infamous Rusk Maximum Security Prison for the Criminally Insane, and in ...