In a summer exploding with new releases including new albums from the likes of Fleet Foxes, Fruit Bats, Beirut, Bon Iver and Vetiver, it's hard to pick one album from the lot. Yet what makes Okkervil River's "I Am Very Far"unique is its blending of styles the band has been toying with for the past 10 years, and with what amazing success it has had.

Okkervil River is not a band known for shying away from danger and catastrophe, but this album in particular seems to have an aura of immanent destruction about it. "I Am Very Far" feels like a venture into an unstable western land where danger can come from gun-toting riders and a saucy piratess not afraid to cut a throat, or simply from ever-looming disaster which will inevitably find us all.

The frantically paced opening song "The Valley" features a gunshot, a slit throat, a hanging and an exploding city in each verse. The album also includes quite a few debonair waltzes. Because of this the album feels steeped in history, much like the band's previous album "Black Sheep Boy." Yet unlike "Black Sheep Boy,""I Am Very Far" feels less like some uncovered fable — perhaps because it rarely features acoustic and orchestral instruments.

Stylistically, the songs are more like the rock ballads of its last two releases, "The Stage Names" and "The Stand Ins," yet are hardly as self-aware as these albums which dealt more with personal themes like trying to make it big and human relationships. Even elements of some of the band's earliest albums like "Don't Fall in Love" With Everyone You See" and "Down the River of Golden Dreams" are present, particularly in bringing back a pseudo-western theme, perhaps influenced by the band's Austin home.  Okkervil River even keeps the nautical vein that runs deep throughout much of their music with songs like "Piratess and Mermaid," without breaking out Uncle Salty's vault of sea shanties.

Overall this album feels like a culmination of a successful artistic career by blending so many different styles and themes the band has been known for — and now, like whiskey aged in an oak barrel, Okkervil River has reached a sort of maturity. Drink it up, friends.

4/5 stars