Jagjaguwar
2007
The Stage Names
About This Album
Okkervil River broke away from the crowded indie rock pack with 2005's superb Black Sheep Boy, a ragged but ornate barroom romp that drank its way to the top of countless year-end lists by finding that thin vein that separates triumph and desperation and hammering as many nails into it as they could in under 50 minutes. Fans used to Will Sheff's visceral, lo-fi caterwauls may be disappointed in the bruised and elegant Stage Names upon first listen, but further spins reveal BSB as more of a stepping-stone than a peak. "It's just a life story/so there's no climax," from the rousing opener "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe" sets the tone, and its floor tom gallop and volatile whoops sound like an unholy combination of My Aim Is True-era Elvis Costello and Transformer-era Lou Reed spilling out of an old player piano. Sheff has proven himself again and again to be a gifted wordsmith, and Stage Names features some of his finest parlor room romanticisms and slacker-poet observations to date. "Plus Ones," a studied rumination on some of popular music's most beloved numerically titled tracks ("96 Tears," "99 Luftballons," "Eight Miles High," "TVC 15," "7 Chinese Brothers," "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" etc.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5 and 6)

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