Cosmic Bus said:

Golden Dreams will always be my favorite; I can remember championing the album here back when they were fairly unknown. My enthusiasm for them has wained a bit since (inevitable, when a band shows continuous quality but never mixes the formula up) but I still look forward to hearing their new material as it comes, and there's always one truly killer song on each disc.

Click to expand...

DanielPlainview said:

Yeah new album is gonna be awesome

I'm loving how the cover art matches up:

Click to expand...

A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene said:

I wanted to smile like a glistening shot of a kiss that's as sharp as a knife
The day expires
In the dry, cracked, trembling lips God saw fit to put his kiss inside
I lift them up to you, I'd like to bear witness to our life that is fine and is filling the cryingest eyes
Gracing each face that is making the waste that is broken as one's fairly fly
Love that is innocent, of that old covetest, cancerous vibe
And a beauty that annihilates all life

Click to expand...

A Girl in Port said:

Oh, I'm a weak and lonely sort
Though I'm not sailing just for sport
I've come to feel
Out on the sea
These urgent lives
Press against me
I'm just aghast
I'm not a part
My tender head
With my easy heart
These several years out on the sea
Made me empty, cold, and clear
Pour yourself into me

Click to expand...

A Stone said:

And when that queen's daughter
came of age,
I think she'd be lovely
and stubborn and brave,
and suitors would journey
from kingdoms away
just to make themselves known.

And I think that I know the bitter dismay of a lover who brought
fresh brouquets every day
when she turned him away
to remember some knave
who once gave
just one rose, one day, years ago.

Click to expand...

John Allyn Smith Sails said:

And at the funeral, the University
Cried at three poems they'd present in place of a broken me

Click to expand...

Our Life Is Not A Movie or Maybe said:

It’s just a house burning, but it’s not haunted.
It was your heart hurting, but not for long, kid.

Click to expand...

Song Of Our So-Called Friend said:

Well, loving is as loving does, and I’d say we should know, because we both have loved, have lost, and are alone.

Click to expand...

The President's Dead said:

In your own little way, I'm a small quiet man
I've got no wars to win, I don't have a big plan
But I love my new place, and I love my old friends
And I scrimp and save, and one day I'll have kids.

I can truthfully say that my day was like that,
'Til the radio playing on the stand by the bed
Fired out this report and in 3 words they said,
Like 3 shots to my head,
The President's Dead.

Click to expand...

Unless It's Kicks said:

And on a seven day high
That heavenly song
Punches right through my mind
And pumps through my blood

Click to expand...

Westfall said:

And when I killed her it was so easy that I wanted to kill her again. I got down on both of my knees and….she ain’t coming back again.

Click to expand...

You Can't Hold The Hand Of A Rock And Roll Man said:

You'll destroy your chance to ever get repeatedly engaged

Click to expand...

ATF487 said:

Surprised how quickly the followup is coming out though, is this the second half to the story or more like a collection of B-sides/holdovers?

Click to expand...

Flashback: June 2007. Okkervil River's Will Sheff is telling Matthew Solarski about the creation of The Stage Names, which would go on to become one of Pitchfork's favorite albums of 2007.

He says, "For a while we had this idea that we were going to make a double album. I've always thought double albums were super pretentious and really terrible to do, but I have this thing with me where whenever I start railing against something being terrible and telling everyone I know that it's a bad and awful thing, sooner or later this perverse side of me starts getting drawn to whatever idea that I've been railing against. I'm like, 'Oh that's such a terrible thing, a terrible thing' and then it slowly turns into 'it's so terrible, but kind of in a good way'-- and then-- 'you have to do it.' So for a while there we were thinking about doing a double album, but in the end I think sanity prevailed."

Well, a year later, we've got the second half of that double album. Arriving September 9 via Jagjaguwar, the previously reported The Stand Ins continues the story begun by The Stage Names. Among its 11 tracks, the album features the "Savannah Smiles" sequel "Starry Stairs" (discussed in Mike Carriere's interview with Sheff in August) and "Lost Coastlines", a duet between Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg, who recently left Okkervil to concentrate on his band Shearwater full-time. "Lost Coastlines" discusses "the joys and hardships of trying to keep the band together," according to a press release. Okkervil River touring guitarist Charles Bissell of the Wrens also contributed to the album.

The sequel theme even extends to the album cover, which depicts what's going on just below the cover of The Stage Names.

Okkervil River will celebrate The Stand Ins with a mammoth fall tour of North America and the UK. Onward!

The Stand Ins tracklist:

01 The Stand Ins, One
02 Lost Coastlines
03 Singer Songwriter
04 Starry Stairs
05 Blue Tulip
06 The Stand Ins, Two
07 Pop Lie
08 On Tour With Zykos
09 Calling and Not Calling My Ex
10 The Stand Ins, Three
11 Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979

Click to expand...

GG-Duo said:

Got into them through GAF. Love'em, though I kind of prefer the older stuff.
I don't get the intertextuality of the newer material, so I'm less able to appreciate it.

Click to expand...

Cosmic Bus said:

Golden Dreams will always be my favorite; I can remember championing the album here back when they were fairly unknown. My enthusiasm for them has wained a bit since (inevitable, when a band shows continuous quality but never mixes the formula up) but I still look forward to hearing their new material as it comes, and there's always one truly killer song on each disc.

Click to expand...

DanielPlainview said:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/50979-okkervil-river-reveal-full-details-of-ithe-stand-insi



So far I've heard Lost Coastlines and Starry Stairs and both are so awesome. I really wonder what the 3 part "The Stand Ins" is going to be like. I wonder if it is going to be like what The Decemberists did on "The Crane Wife". That would be epic.

Click to expand...

jon bones said:

red is my favorite color...

Click to expand...

sefskillz said:

Not quite as good live without Cassidy in the lineup. Hopefully, they can start pulling down some dollars so he can tour with them again. I hope he's still working on the studio stuff at least. I love the Wrens, but Bissell just wasn't getting it done for them on the last tour.

Meiburg bailed too.. I haven't had a chance to hear much of the new Shearwater, but I'm looking forward to what he's up to.

Click to expand...

sefskillz said:

Not quite as good live without Cassidy in the lineup. Hopefully, they can start pulling down some dollars so he can tour with them again. I hope he's still working on the studio stuff at least. I love the Wrens, but Bissell just wasn't getting it done for them on the last tour.

Meiburg bailed too.. I haven't had a chance to hear much of the new Shearwater, but I'm looking forward to what he's up to.

Click to expand...

DanielPlainview said:

The Stand-Ins has been leaked!

My life is complete!

Click to expand...

yodandy said:

Its so beautiful! wow...!!!

Click to expand...

DanielPlainview said:

hi friend

Click to expand...

DanielPlainview said:

hi friend

Click to expand...

Packed and all eyes turned in, no one to see on the key.
No one waving for me just the shoreline receding.
Ticket in my hand and thinking wish I didn't hand it in.
Cause who said sailing is fine?
leaving behind all the faces that I might replace if I tried on that long ride, looking deep inside but I don’t want to look so deep inside yet.

Sit down, sit down on the proud wave bye, there might not be another star, farther on the line.
Look out, look out at each town that glides by, and there's another crowd, to drown in crying eyes.
And see how that light you love now just won’t shine, there might just be another star, that’s high and far in some other sky.

We sing, is that marionette real enough yet to step off of that set and decide what a dance might mean to it.
Ruining the place where the ensuing may lay escape.
We packed up all of our bags the ship's deck now sags from the weight of our tracks as we pace beneath flags black and battered rattling our swords in service of some fated, foreign, war.

And Jonathan says we sail out on order of him but we find that the maps he sent to us don't mention lost coastlines.
Where nothing we've actually seen has been mapped or outlined and we don't recognize the names upon strange signs.

And every night finds us rocking and rolling on waves wild and wide, well we have lost our way, nobody’s gonna say it outright. Just go la la la la la la la la la…..

Click to expand...

Your great-grandfather was a great lawyer
and his kid made his mints off the war
Her father shot stills and then directed films that your mom did publicity for
I saw your older sis on the years best book list
and your brother, he manages bands
and your keen to downplay
but your quick to betray
with one welt of that wave of your hand

You come from wealth
Yeah you got wealth
What a bitch they didn't give you much else

I heard cuts by the Kinks on your speakers
I saw Poe and Arto (?) on your shelves
While the last laughs first scene on your flat panel screen
lit Chanel that you wrapped around yourself
you've got outsider art by an artist who arguably kidnapped a kid on the wall
your designers have slyly directed the art outlines that lines (?) your well lit hall.

You've got taste
You've got taste
What a waste but that's all that you have

Ahh, you wrote your thesis on the gospel of Thomas
You shot some reversal film in Anchor Wha (?)
And this book you once read said there is less people dead at this point now then those who are not
and this film we once saw was reviled for its flaws, but its flaws were what made us have fun
and the lives that folks had might have made us feel bad, why feel bad man? its nothing you've done

It's all in your hand
It's all in your hand
like all a gun
like a globe (?)
like a gram

and this thing you once said disappeared from my head
in the time that it took to be amazed
and this thing you once did might have dazzled the kids
but the kids once grown up are gonna walk away
and your world is gonna change nothing (2x)
and our world is gonna change nothing (3x)

Click to expand...

hey ask for more;
What do you think this fanclub is for?
I slithered up each rose corridor,
I kept a warm safe place in my core
before I lost it.

They ask for blood;
What do you think this womans made of?
I stuck a small thin pin in my thumb;
They dreamt a low long line to be crossed
and I crossed it.

I'm alive but a different kind of life
Than the way I used to be;
I retire to a split white smile to be seen
In on an old sad magazine.

And this girls eyes,
Well they were roughly wretched open;
I could see a starry stare up your thigh.
You hid behind your hair, oh, but I saw you smiling

While all these guys, all these curious sets of eyes
safe behind a TV screen.
I let them pry;
Pick apart and hang out to dry
Almost every piece of me.
(If you don't love me, I'm sorry)

Oh what a trip,
Oh what a shivering silver ship,
Oh what a hot half-life I half lived
Oh and the stripes and stars
how they stripped off the siding.

When my life ripped, all from the part that played as a kid
Into the part that blazed through your lips
To find a safe warm place then to sit
curl up inside it.

So here's goodbye
From the part that stays behind
To the part that has to leave
To the sublime lips that were never spoiled
by lying to the face inside the being
Who wasn't me
Who wasn't me
She's not me

Click to expand...

They are waiting to hate you
so give them an excuse
They say that it changed you
I know that can't be true
I came in the entrance the make up girl went through
and waited for ages
I waited there for you

Hats off to my distant hope
I'm held back by a velvet rope
and he's behind the wall of smoke machine
has made between us
and if he does exist
if camera clicking green room guests swirl around the man
whose real and can be touched then I'll do just that much


Hats off to my distant hope
A ray of light
A puff of smoke
my street tonight's on fire with hope
you'll be there and you'll see us
I've got my ear against the screen
I feel your feelings crackling through every single inch of me
I'm going to make you mean it
with every single cell of me
I'm going to make you mean the words you sigh
Goodbye

Click to expand...

Our sweetly song is distinctly stated (?)
Words and music you calculated
to make you sing along
with your stereo on
as you stand in your shorts on your lawn

get completed incorporated
by some who some couple who consummated
their first love by the dawn
a falling star wished upon
that flash in the sky it was gone

and that's where it (?)
blonde haired baby (?)

in the (?) backroom the kids all waited
to meet the man in bright green
who had dreamed of the dream
that they wrecked their hearts upon

he is the liar who lied in his pop song
and your lying when you sing along
your lying when you sing along

so here is the carseat so cruely (?) waited
and here's the faces already faded
at the end of the day
when they just threw away
your stupid (?) thing they own
and now their packed up and take your lady (?)

first the foodcourt
the floats are flated
people lined up to see
the man who dreamed up the dream
that they wrecked their hearts upon

he is the liar who lied in his pop song
the liar who lied in his pop song
and your lying when you sing along
oh yeah, your lying when you sing along

week by week it comes up and comes on
and were feeling alright though we know its all wrong
I'm ashamed to admit that I can not resist what I wished for the truth but its not
I truly believed when I'm strong (?)
and we sing till our voices our gone
and sing me back that manicured lawn (?)

This is respectfully dedicated to
the woman who concentrated all of her love
to find that she had wasted it all
the liar who lied in this song

Click to expand...

He gets close but I choke
take your shit, take your clothes
and get out of my home
I want you to love me
or I want you long gone
you say your real name is Jon
hey thanks jon
go sing songs
go rock on
roll your crew on down the road
to the next sold out show
think you can get up above me?
well I want you to know

that your a figure of fun to everyone
beneath (?) the lone star in the yond (?) blue broken sign
they wished they were you
like I wished you were mine
what a dumb thing to do

how come I shout goodbye
when god knows I just want to
make this white lie big enough
to climb inside with you

another day lost and gone
clipping pages from the news for the senators son
well he just strolls through the lobby
and glad (?) hands everyone
another tossed and done

I go home
take off clothes
smoke a bowl
watch a whole TV movie
I was supposed to be writing
the most beautiful poems
and completely revealing
divine mysteries of close (?)
I can't say I'm feeling all that much at all
at 27 years old

I'm disgust with desire by the guys who conspire
at the only decent bar in town
and they drink MGD's
and they wish they had me
like I wish had fire
what a sad way to be
what a girl who got tired
so I wonder who you got your hooks in tonight
was she happy to be hooked and on your arm
did she feel alive?
her head alright

Click to expand...

She was once mine
that smile that shines from the glossy magazine
that's stuck inside the sunday times
she was so sweet on christmas eve
with the snow set deep when we went walking through the pines
I had just been fired when her first offer had arrived
and the new year would see her flying far away from me
though I didn't know it at the time

with outstretched hands now she commands
a famous figure for every picture
and she stands up strong and she demands
and they deliver
yeah she's a fixture
and it's a mixture of dumb jealousy and fear
that I might feel should she appear
just like it hasn't been three years
and there's a distance to her voice over the phone
and that's because she stands alone
while I'm still sitting here

girl you see me here on another quiet night
I will wait until another indistinguishable day arrives
outside where the lights even and bright (?)
where my life sweet as it slightly disappointingly just gliding softly by
girl you wont wait for me in some secluded stand of trees
some christmas eve
some god was kind enough to set aside
although I love you too
I'm proud of you
god knows I'm feeling really stupid now
for ever having said goodbye

during the fight
I said yeah right
when you insisted that I visit that you'd write
now I know your working hard so I never hear from you
and thats fine
you look the same on TV
as when you were mine
I walk in from the kitchen
and I finger the remote control
I watch you from the distance
you go walking through the terminal
I remember every instance when you stung me
well your so lovely
well your so smart

so go turn their heads
go knock them dead
go break their hearts
go break their hearts
baby break their hearts
and I know you will

Click to expand...

Pull down the shades
lets kill the morning
lets kill the morning
let it die
well your eyes
flash out a warning
but there will be a morning
after afternoon ends tonight
fuck long hours sick with singing
sick with singing the same songs
in the bars they'll soon be drinking
lets cash my check and drink along

old times
hello hey I've missed you
old life hey now, let me in
because you win on every issue
now can I kiss you?
don't you care how long its been?
its been so many years
I lived my earning (?)
but in every bed it let me through
they only blew on what was burning
and it grew
the fire grew

and now with nothing to consume
well its turned on me
in my glass room
where I bet you think I'm finished
think I'm not winning
well go on, assume

so take me on yours (?) morning starship
sparkling stars line your lights as they lift off
the loneliest street corner this clown has leaned against

I let all these fine faces fold into me
run from the space lights illumines the sea
as the laughing the mouths open wetly open
oh we set the sighing
we'll take them flying
and we'll take this man left almost passed out
cause we are pretty sure he needs a hand
he says he can't stand and when we pick him up
he asks us where this ship will land
but he knows and we know
it isn't coming down
he knows we know we'll fly so far
til finally stars hold him in all around
till he forgets the ground
til he forgets the crawling way real people sometimes are

Click to expand...