Okkervil River – The Stand Ins Review
Okkervil River released The Stand Ins on September 9th as a follow up to the critically acclaimed and my 3rd favorite album of 2007, The Stage Names.
This album was meant to be a 2nd disc of a double disc feature but instead we get a album roughly a year later but this time sans Jonathan Meiburg. He did however lend his hand to one of the better tracks I’ve heard this year in “Lost Coastlines”.
One thing I’d like to mention that I hated off the bat was the 30 second interludes (fine one is an intro). They usually strike as either filler or an uncompleted song (in which case I feel sad for not getting more). This album contains 3 interludes almost inexplicably and I really felt the need to skip them. This roughly makes this album just 8 songs. With Okkervil River though, 8 songs is often more then enough.
Okkervil River and Will Sheff seem to be quite angry at other musicians. A song like Singer Songwriter is an angry rant against either singer songwriters or the pretentious/indie culture in general. It uses more of a blues style hook and you can really feel Will Sheff’s general anger “You’ve got taste, what a waste that’s all you have”. It’s a cool song to discuss because the message is clear and while Sheff does do a great job of expressing himself, I still desire a little more quality of singing. The song is alright but it’s more or less a rant then a song. Nothing specifically wrong with the track but nothing amazing. Props for the line “You shot some reversal film in Angkor Wat” (I have tons of artwork because my parents are Khmer).
Starry Stairs is a much better song in my opinion, it’s a bit of a slow-paced song but I think the song writing is better but the probably reason it’s not as popular is that I’m unsure of what it’s about. It sounds like a story of being a boyfriend/significant other to a movie star of some sort.
My favorite song (other then Lost Coastlines) is Calling and Not Calling My Ex, it starts like a pop song which seems like a continuation of Starry Stairs, basically about the same topic. Seeing someone you love that has left to become famous. My next favorite song is On Tour With Zykos, Zykos is apparently a band out of Austin, Texas.
I can’t do a review without mentioning the track Pop Lie, like Singer Songwriter where he discusses music song writers who write lies in their pop songs and the fans who are fooled by it (Sheff doesn’t differentiate). It’s another angry rant, it seems as if Okkervil River is really pissed off.
Musically, I definitely think this is an inferior release to Black Sheep Boy and The Stage Names. There’s something missing on a lot of these songs (maybe it’s Meiburg), it just lacks some sort of edge, or raw emotion you can feel from the start. Lyrically it’s brilliant like Okkervil River is supposed to. I guess the album works thematically but I rarely noticed until looking afterward on the song lyrics.
It comes in as satisfactory but not to high astronomical level that I expected. Just an alright album maybe even lackluster.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
The album in its entirety is streaming on their myspace.
Starry Stairs by Okkervil River
Calling and Not Calling My Ex by Okkervil River
Tags: album
I think that a whole, the album doesn’t quite reach The Stage Names, but there’s a couple of songs, Blue Tulip and Bruce Wayne Campbell…, which I think are as good as some on Black Sheep Boy (by Black Sheep Boy, I’m including it’s appendix, because that’s how I think of it), and therefore surpass most on The Stage Names, as it is my view that Black Sheep Boy > Stage Names.
Starry Stars is supposed to be a sequel to Savannah Smiles from Stage Names, which is about Shannon Wilsey/Savannah the porn star. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/44522-interview-okkervil-river
I’m enjoying the album, and Calling and Not Calling My Ex and On Tour With Zykos where my initial favourites, Blue Tulip and Bruce Wayne Campbell have grown on me to the point where they’ve surpassed all others.