Track Listing

1. Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe
2. Unless It Kicks
3. Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene, A
4. Savannah Smiles
5. Plus Ones
6. Girl In Port, A
7. You Can't Hold The Hand Of A Rock And Roll Man
8. Title Track
9. John Allyn Smith Sails

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #646 in Music
• Released on: 2007-08-07
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
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.

Amazon.com
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 Bartlett

Customer Reviews

A really impressive indie-rock style album
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.

Great Album
I've been listening to this one quite a bit and it really gets better each time. This album is strung together amazingly, with unique and thoughtful lyrics. They can play fast, slow, loud, soft... it all sounds great and original. "Our life is not a movie...", "Unless it kicks"... and "Plus 1" are standout tracks; all are gems though. This is a must-have.

Trying not to turn off
Okkervil river's new album has an urgency , a sense that the music must come out, must roll forward in exactly the order that it does, that herald's all great rock albums. Though there are undeniable folk tones, the rock albumness of it starts and ends with `Unless it Kicks', the best rock song since `Power's Out'.

'Unless it kicks' has that forcefulness, that sense, of this, this right here, being the purpose of creating and appreciating music. It has that epic rock track intensity that often finishes with a wordless yell (such as is found in `Will you smile again for me' or `Freebird' or `Let the devil in').

What does justify making or consuming music if not the kicks it provides, if not the fictions that pick us up from down, that distract us, that hum through our blood, that even if you know they're a lie, you still give your love, you still believe? And to hear the lead singer tell us that this blind love is what breaks his heart the most, and that this love of the music, which may seem unrequited, isn't, is fully reciprocated in all the joy of the music; and that together, us and the music created by the band, we WILL try not to turn off, and we WILL not be alone in believing a lie about our grace, about our reprieve.

Plus Ones and Girl in Port are both excellent slower songs, the lyrical references on Plus Ones are particularly appealing, the best example coming in this run of verses towards the end.


51st way to leave your lover
Admittedly, it doesn't seem to be as gentle or as clean as all the others,
Leaving its scars.

All in the after hours of some Greenpoint bar
I told you, I can't listen, baby,
'bout the 4th time you were a lady and how your forthrightness betrayed a secret shyness
Stripped away by days of being hailed as "your highness"
And what's new pussycat, as you were once a lioness;
They cut your claws out

Kitten, not everyone's keen on lighting candle 17, the party's done, the cake's all gone, the plates are clean
The chauffeur's leering from the cheerless mezzanine
And in just one year, this straight world could pay to see what they have been missing


Rhyming shyness/highness/lioness immediately followed by clean/mezzanine is pretty dope.

The lyrics, the sincerity and the depth of the last six tracks, provide a wonderful contrast to the three rollicking tracks that flow together at the top of the album.