There is no redemption in rock ‘n’ roll. Show business is just a place where the emotionally deprived search for acceptance, a place where people use one another to get ahead. Pop singers are an especially manipulative bunch, insane egos driven to the spotlight to fulfill a craving that cannot be sated, no matter how many records are produced, how many groupies are fucked, and how many hearts are broken. Last year, Will Sheff, the main songwriting force in Okkervil River, compared life to a bad television movie on The Stage Names. With its sequel, The Stand Ins, Sheff continues to focus his microscope on seedy characters living seedy lives, trying to work out his own raison d'être as a singer in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
A series of instrumental tracks are interwoven throughout The Stand Ins. Although their addition may be an attempt to pad out its eight proper songs, these short blasts of incidental music do well to thematically tie things together. After the first of these vignettes, the album launches into "Lost Coastlines," a crackerjack of a song that alone justifies the purchase of the album. Slowly building from an acoustic guitar strum to a powerful stomp complete with horns, Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg trade off verses using sailing metaphors to describe the travails of touring. But the most powerful element is when the lyrics are stripped away and Sheff simply sings "La, la, la." More emotion is conveyed in these syllables than the rest of the album's clever turns of phrase.
The band then moves into Wilco territory with the upbeat country-tinged rocker "Singer Songwriter." Sheff's unfortunate characters return here as he spits vituperations such as "You come from wealth/ What a bitch they didn't give you much else." The level of scorn in this tale -- about a vapid family concerned only with fame and money -- is particularly bitter until Sheff finally turns the camera onto himself with the final lyric. He may very well be the first pop singer apologist.
Sheff's guilt is particularly palpable on "Pop Lie" and "On Tour With Zykos." While the former focuses on a singer who uses his fame to mislead his sycophantic followers ("He's the liar who lied in his pop songs/ And you're lying when you sing along"), the latter deals with the empty inner life behind the face on stage. Both funny and pathetic, lyrics like "You say your real name is John?/ Hey, thanks John/ Go rock on/ Roll your crew down the road to the next sold-out show" demonstrate Sheff's bleak vision of celebrity.
Though Sheff's lyrics can be too earnest sometimes ("With every single cell of me/ I'm going to make you mean the words you sign," for example), there's no doubt he's one of the most exciting songwriters of recent years, and The Stand Ins is another fine entry in the band's discography. The album may suffer from a release date so near the excellent The Stage Names (think Amnesiac), but that shouldn't stop anyone from checking it out. Sheff is a reluctant celebrity, and his disinclination and perhaps fear of turning into a cliché is what drives Okkervil River. He simply refuses to vanish into the milieu of empty gestures and shallow songwriting. It is precisely this confrontation, the growing fame and the increasing terror of becoming the thing he hates most, that keeps Sheff's songwriting fresh and exciting.
1. Stand Ins, One
2. Lost Coastlines
3. Singer Songwriter
4. Starry Stairs
5. Blue Tulip
6. Stand Ins, Two
7. Pop Lie
8. On Tour With Zykos
9. Calling and Not Calling My Ex
10. Stand Ins, Three
11. Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979
More about: Okkervil River
