The music of the Austin, Texas based band Okkervil River violently and majestically seems to burst and come apart at the seams.

Their 2005 masterpiece “Black Sheep Boy” exemplifies this sound as frontman Will Sheff takes his band further from the floating, folksier sound on 2003’s “Down the River of Golden Dreams” into rougher territory, both sonically and thematically.

Sheff sings like a man possessed and, although he doesn’t always sing in perfect pitch, he personifies the album’s title character, Black Sheep Boy—a being who looks into an abyss and likes what he sees. It’s a bizarre character to put at the center of this concept album, a pseudo-hero who gains pleasure from the darkness and emptiness. This character (and album title) comes from a song of the same name by 60s folk singer Tim Hardin.

“Black Sheep Boy” cools off in the eerie lullaby “In a Radio Song,” in which we are really introduced to Black Sheep Boy, a character who is completely and utterly alone. Suddenly the album shifts into the fast-paced “Black,” which is the closest the album gets to mainstream. Here Sheff makes it clear that Black Sheep Boy is in no way an innocent.

Much of Sheff’s motive seems to be to discount the fairy tale attitude towards love and life that is present in much of mainstream music. “A King and A Queen” and “A Stone” are both slow tracks that brutally deconstruct fairy tale like love. “The Latest Toughs” adds another aspect to Black Sheep Boy’s personality, displaying him as a tragic hero manipulated by fate. It is also one of the strongest tracks on the album, with catchy refrains, soaring strings and strange whispering. We are finally left with the threatening, sorrowful dirge “So Come Back, I Am Waiting.”

Dark themes and sounds are omnipresent in the album, but it isn’t emo. Although it does have some grotesque lyrics and seriously weird cover art (featuring horned, macabre figures depicted in stark black and white), Sheff shows us the beauty in a broken life, and that there is always hope. “Black Sheep Boy” reminds us that princesses aren’t always rescued, endings aren’t always happy and that monsters can be heroes too.