Finding a great musician today is like sifting through the $5.00 movie bin at Wal-Mart. You have to sort through about 725 copies of Gigli before
you can find that one Pulp
Fiction DVD.
With the seemingly endless amount of mediocre musicians out there today, it can be difficult to recognize the difference between quality music and the stuff that should only be played at 4 a.m. in the back of
a seedy motel in Nowheresville, America.
Enter Okkervil River, an Americana indie rock band who’s got more poetry and soul in their folky songs than most emerging bands
combined today.
The Austin-based band has gathered an impressive following in the 10 years they’ve been active, including Lou Reed of the influential band, The Velvet Underground.
Okkervil River’s fifth and latest album, The Stand Ins was released on September 9, 2008, and serves as a sequel to the band’s fourth album
The Stage Names.
After listening to the two albums, it was clear that they fit together effortlessly. However, I was both impressed and surprised at how well each album stood alone. Dependent or independent of one another, The Stage Names and The Stand Ins are equally strong bodies of work.
The Stand Ins starts on a deeply bleak note with the 48-second-long “The Stand Ins, One,” the first of three transitional instrumental breaks which direct the listener tastefully to the next track. “Lost Coastlines,” kicks the album off like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Will Sheff croons about embarking on a sea journey while a countryesque rhythmic guitar accompanies him in the background.
“Blue Tulip” is undoubtedly the most beautifully dismal track on the album, leaving the listener hanging on to each note, clinging to the remnants of a recently ended
relationship.
Sheff aids you in feeling his pain while he dramatically sings, “Hats off to my distant hope, Iím held back by a
velvet rope.”
“The Stand Ins, Two” uses its 32 seconds of instrumentation to lighten up the scene and jolt you into the next track, “Pop Lies,” arguably the album’s most upbeat track about a musician who lies in his pop song; one can only speculate as to who Sheff is singing about and honestly, I’d rather not know.
Epically winding the album down is “The Stand Ins, Three,” the third and final instrumental, a lovely goodbye from the band, but not before the final track. “Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On The Roof Of The Chelsea,” is about the death of Jobriath, a glam rock singer who was briefly famous in 1973 yet died 10 years later of AIDS.
The droning horns and syrupy vocals on the last track serve as a last cry, lulling the listener into divine unconsciousness, or something like that.
Overall, Okkervil River’s The Stand Ins is a praiseworthy album, soothing listeners with sweet discourse about life’s ups and downs.