Okkervil River - The Stage Names
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Okkervil RiverEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-08-07
Music Label: Jagjaguwar
Soundtracks:
- Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe
- Unless It Kicks
- Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene, A
- Savannah Smiles
- Plus Ones
- Girl In Port, A
- You Can't Hold The Hand Of A Rock And Roll Man
- Title Track
- John Allyn Smith Sails
Free Music Notes for The Stage Names
Free Music Review: A really impressive indie-rock style album
Hit: 4 Stars
I know that these guys were one of the indie darlings in 2007 but I didn't get into this album until 2008. However, I am glad that I did. The album is a great mix of songs of varying tempos, and the 9 songs on it feel like just the right amount.
The first two songs are really great up-tempo numbers, with the second song, Unless Its Kicks, the real highlight of the album. The lyrics are fantastic, with each song telling a unique story and repetitive lyrics and choruses typically avoided. The writing is very clever this way as it really sounds more like stories rather than the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus routine.
The slower songs are great as well. Savannah Smiles is a song about reading his daughter's diary and lamenting the innocence lost with youth. It seems like a wise-beyond-one's-years type of song as I'm assuming that the author isn't actually old enough to have the teenage (or older) daughter he describes in the song.
Plus Ones is a clever song that took me a few listens to realize what was going on. They've cleverly woven songs from the 70s onward into this song's lyrics. Essentially, songs such as 99 Luftballoons, 7 Chinese Brothers, 50 Ways to Leave your Lover, and others, get the "plus one" treatment. Very clever the way it was turned into a story.
Title Track is the only dud as I see it on the album. There are a couple of minor drawbacks. While I'm not concerned about foul language, there were just a couple of instances throughout the album that prevent me from playing it when the kids are around, which is a shame because there's so much to get out of the album otherwise. When they're just a little bit older and I don't care what they hear I'll certainly play it around them, then.
The album ends with John Allyn Smith Sails which re-works the Beach Boys' Sloop John B in a very energetic way and makes for a great ending to a great album.
The Stage Names Poster
On their debut album, Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See, Okkervil River invoked Otis Redding's "I've Got Dreams to Remember" in a late-album sweep of drama. Here they take the closer, "John Allyn Smith Sails," and spin languidly into verses from "Sloop John B," with tattered, ragged horns invoking Neutral Milk Hotel. Singer Will Sheff re-asserts his primacy as the best mid-range, lyric-wobbling howler as he pleads, "I feel so broke up, I wanna go home." But you don't have to wait until the ninth track to get the point: Okkervil River has grown yet again, weaving mandolin twang with pump organ wheeze as they name-check the Byrds, "99 Luftbaloons," and Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," all in the first two minutes of "Plus Ones," and then embracing sad-sack heartbreak amidst pedal steel on "A Girl in Port," a mere four tracks after the distortion-laden guitar riffage of "Unless It's Kicks." Hyper-literate, musically accomplished, and keenly aware of dramatic sweep, Okkervil River continues fulfilling the promise inherent not only in each of their prior albums but also in the enthused throes of passion marking Okkervil's colleagues, Arcade Fire and Decemberists and Bright Eyes. A brilliant work, The Stage Names. --Andrew BartlettThis record dynamites the moss-covered castle walls of 2005's "Black Sheep Boy" to let in the glaring sun. Riddled with characters real and fake, with the relics of high culture and the crumpled up trash of low culture, "The Stage Names" is a cinemascopic take on the meaning of entertainment in the modern world. Reverberant with echoes of Motown snap and girl group pop, redolent with ripe whiffs of dirty rock 'n' roll, shining with the shimmy of Bo Diddley, with the shimmer of the Velvets, with the swagger of the Faces, and with a glittery sprinkling of cheap perfume to disguise the stink, "The Stage Names" is a relentlessly paced and ruthlessly thrilling journey.
This record dynamites the moss-covered castle walls of 2005's "Black Sheep Boy" to let in the glaring sun. Riddled with characters real and fake, with the relics of high culture and the crumpled up trash of low culture, "The Stage Names" is a cinemascopic take on the meaning of entertainment in the modern world. Reverberant with echoes of Motown snap and girl group pop, redolent with ripe whiffs of dirty rock 'n' roll, shining with the shimmy of Bo Diddley, with the shimmer of the Velvets, with the swagger of the Faces, and with a glittery sprinkling of cheap perfume to disguise the stink, "The Stage Names" is a relentlessly paced and ruthlessly thrilling journey.
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