The Stage Names

With their newest release, The Stage Names, Okkervil River dynamite the walls of Black Sheep Boy's gothic, moss-walled castle from the inside to let in the glaring sun. Riddled with characters real and fake, with true-life biography and brazenly fabricated autobiography, 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. And, crucially, it entertains. Written on the beds and beat-up couches of hotels, guest-rooms, and fourth-floor walk-ups during the itinerant Sheff's travels around the United States and tenure in New York City, recorded in Austin with longtime Okkervil River co-producer Brian Beattie, and mixed with Jim Eno of Spoon at his Public Hi-Fi studio, The Stage Names eschews outsider guests to focus on the core lineup of a backing band made tight and road-weary in rock clubs around the world. These songs give members of this usually shambolic troupe (keyboardist Jonathan Meiburg, drummer Travis Nelsen, electric guitarist Brian Cassidy, bassist Patrick Pestorius, and coronet player Scott Brackett) the occasion to turn in bravura performances as Sheff's distinctively heated vocals, never more assured or in control, sail on top of them. The music soars, the lyrics cut, chaos is skirted, mystery is courted, and it all looks easy.