Lonesome Americana, kicked up a lively notch

Okkervil River comes out of Austin, Texas, to bring the abject misery back to alt-country balladry, blowing right past the cool maturity of such stars of the genre as Wilco to work somewhere in a quavering unknown between Will Oldham and Nick Cave. On Friday at the Alter-Knit Lounge, this young quartet clawed its way toward a keening, urgent brand of distress where love is an extravagant tragedy and young men scream over the world’s saddest accordion.

Opening with “Maine Island Lovers,” from the group’s third album, “Down the River of Golden Dreams,” lead bard Will Robinson Sheff murmured softly, showing a barely-contained anxiety in his scratching at his worn acoustic guitar. This anxiety would explode on the next tune, a Mekons-style barroom sea chantey that revealed the band’s other persona: Taking up mandolins, accordions and harmonicas, the Okkervil boys can kick up a deadly Irish lament.

The band’s real strength is capturing lonesome Americana, a Woody Guthrie-via-Gram Parsons infatuation with the universal experience of the country. In “Kansas City,” a reimagining of an old-timey song form, Sheff sings, “I’d hold you all close and take you with me, all of you to Kansas City, where the sky is so blue.” Okkervil brings the country itself alive. On “River Song,” Sheff wails, “Then I woke up one cold morning, felt an absence at my back, and I searched and stared but only the river stared back.” This music goes beyond pop to approach the cosmic.