Okkervil River – “Anthem” (Leonard Cohen Cover)

Fionn Reilly

Okkervil River – “Anthem” (Leonard Cohen Cover)

Fionn Reilly

Okkervil River are in the UK right now, wrapping up a European tour in support of their new album Away. Yesterday, at their show in Bristol, the band honored the late icon Leonard Cohen by covering his song “Anthem,” and now they’ve shared a recording of their rendition. “It’s been a terrible week, over here finishing a European tour watching my country slide towards doom,” frontman Will Sheff writes in a note that accompanies the track. “The news of Leonard Cohen’s death had nothing to do with everything else in the news but, in my agitated state, seemed somehow like it did. Cohen was a songwriting hero to me. I opened our Bristol show, the morning after the announcement of his death, with this solo cover of ‘Anthem,’ which sounds distressingly appropriate to the current moment. We did a full band version of ‘So Long, Marianne’ later in the set. This picture was taken on the ferry from Denmark to Germany. Grey afternoon.” Listen below.

more from New Music