Daily Iowan

Issue date: 9/13/07 Section: 80 Hours

Media Credit: Publicity photo

mp3 sample:

'Okkervil River - Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe'

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I'm trying to pin down the overarching themes of Okkervil River's The Stage Names - a record hailed by Pitchfork and EW as 2007's concept album to beat - but songwriter Will Sheff won't help me out.

"Everybody asks me that, and I don't know what to say," the 31-year-old indie rocker said. "I can say it has something to do with being a fan, something about entertainment, but ultimately, it's not an essay about an idea - I'm just trying to write a harmonious bunch of songs that work together."

The Austin six-piece will arrive at the Picador at 9 p.m. on Saturday, touring to promote the above-mentioned recording - a dense and, yes, harmonious selection of folk-lit rock that cements its place among its tastefully bombastic peers while offering a singular murky vision of pop-culture overdose.

But while we journalist types sweat ink trying to cement the group's music in a succinct-yet-clever phrase, Sheff - a former music critic himself - now tries to stay away from our explanatory nonsense.

"When you're looking at something from a critical viewpoint, you're taking it apart into tinier and tinier parts and saying, 'This goes here, and this goes there, and that's how it works,' " he said. "But when you're writing music, it's the opposite - you're taking things you don't really know and arranging them into something you still don't really see until after it's done."

Luckily for him, The Stage Names (following 2005's impressive Black Sheep Boy) came together to spawn an invested fan-base and international tour. While frequently cheerful in sound, Sheff's lyrics rarely summon happy thoughts. "It's just a bad movie, where there's no crying," opens the album, which staggers through stories of "a Hollywood Babylon bike-a-thon for break dancers all broken down in their beds" before closing with "I feel so broke up, I want to go home."

But this isn't overwrought emo self-depreciation: The tensions seem more philosophical than emotional - though still decidedly heartfelt.

"When you look at how few notes there are, and how little you can do with pop music when so much has been done before … that's a tremendously disappointing realization," Sheff said. "And so you almost have to fool yourself into this teenage moment of discovery mindset, where you're just like: 'What I'm doing is brand-new, and I'm the most brilliant person ever.' And that's total bullshit, but you have to fool yourself if you ever want to make something that has that fresh feel to it."

Continued...

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