Roky Erickson - Never Say Goodbye (1998)

Roky Erickson, the frontman of the legendary 13th Floor Elevators (whose immortal 1966 debut, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, somehow seemingly invented both garage-rock and psychedelic-rock), is set to release his first album of original material in 15 years. True Love Cast Out All Evil will be released April 20 on Anti- Records, the Los Angeles label who has amassed quite a roster of rock'n'roll renegades (Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Os Mutantes, and Merle Haggard amongst them).

Collaborating with Erickson on the album were fellow Austin-dwellers Okkervil River. True Love Cast Out All Evil consists of songs Erickson authored over the last 40 years, telling, in many ways, the life-story of a musician whose battles with mental illness have been long and harrowing (a narrative profoundly told in the 2005 documentary You're Gonna Miss Me: A Film About Roky Erickson).

Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff, working as producer, litters the new record with "found-sound and archival recordings culled from Erickson's home videos and recordings made in the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane."

"I was given sixty unreleased songs to choose from," Sheff explains, in the album's press materials. "Because we started with so many songs to choose from, the quality of the material we ended up with was exhilarating. This is not a cynical comeback record, a lukewarm update on an established legacy - these are the best songs Roky has ever written, unreleased due to decades plagued by the kind of personal tragedies that would destroy someone less resilient."