Okkervil River
The Stage Names
(Jagjaguwar)
Don’t you love a CD that grabs you from the first song? The Stage Names certainly has it from top to the bottom. Songwriter/vocalist Will Sheff likes to jam as many words as possible into each song (in the John K. Samson vein). He doesn’t try to write a song as much as try to tell a story. “Plus Ones” jams in references to songs by Nena, Paul Simon and REM. The mid-tempo “A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene” starts with a nice bass groove and the opening track “Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe” is a firecracker that will start many of the band’s gigs. The surprising part is the CD contains nine songs and clocks in at 41 minutes. It sounds longer.
Aaron Hartling
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2007.