Reviewed: Pt. 2

Okkervil River
The Stand Ins
Jagjaguwar


If I could do it all again, I'd do it right.
I'd give Okkervil Rivers The Stage Names it's rightful title of best album, 2007 because it really had everything I wanted in an album. While musically the band bridged the gap between alt-country and twee pop, it was lead singer Will Sheff crooning in a Morrissey-Scott Walker sorta way that made the album what it was as well as lyrics that bolted Sheff to the head of the class to become the newest Poet Laureate in underground music.
That was all last year. An entire 365+ days ago.
With the release of Okkervil Rivers newest album, The Stand Ins, I feel that I have a chance to make amends without making too bold of a statement because the reality is this album just seems like a continuation of what The Stage Names started. All the souls reaching for that spiritual brass ring are given a voice by Sheff. Their short stories compressed into these songs fit perfectly and never overreach but never seem to gain closure at the same time. Every behind the scene loser and every wanna-be gets called to their podium for a chance to make their case.

"Lost Coastlines" opens up the album and set's the tone as The Stage Names "Our Life is not a Movie or Maybe" did. The band bravely tackles early Tom Petty jangle in a world filled with the dust of post-Strokes fallout that can easily harm your lungs or your career.
The song "Singer-Songwriter" calls to task exactly who the title makes mention of. "I Heard cuts by The Kinks on your speakers. I saw Poe and Artaud on your shelves" is pointed directly at all the over-hip that call themselves artists. Sheff obviously has a bone to pick with them and he writes a scorching assessment of what he sees as their hypocrisy.
With all that, if I have to pick any track as the standout, the closing track "Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979" is it. Sheffs heartbreaking narrative of the late glam-rock icon Jobriath seems a fitting end to an album that seems now to have spanned two years and two discs as well.
The curtain falls as Sheff sums up the story of Jobriath by letting you know very little about his short rise but more to his inevitable fall, possibly summing up the entire theme of Okkervill Rivers last two albums. You can get to the top, as anything is indeed possible, but crashing is a possibility and it's a long way to the bottom. A hard floor that Sheff and Co. visited last year when singing about John Berryman on "John Allyn Smith Sails" and now give narrative to the end of a glitter rocker in the most poetic way possible.

Early September. I can't really tell you much about the "best album of 2008." All I know is that Okkervil River has completed a story with this album. An essential batch of stories that have been written and recorded at an epic pace and places Okkervil River on the short list of artists creating the most vital music these days.
http://www.myspace.com/okkervilriver