Okkervil River preview

Okkervil River
Logan Square Auditorium, Chicago
Tuesday, September 18, 2007

For their fourth LP, Austin’s Okkervil River latch onto the age-old “life is a stage” theme. Unlike Bill Shakespeare, whose poetic constructions were a mirror celebration of life’s complexities, OR frontman Will Sheff takes a decidedly bleaker view and only continues to hold a pen because he’s considering stabbing himself with it.

Fortunately his crack band are there to buck him up. One can breathlessly gaze into the void where Sheff’s hopes once lay (“I’m a man in a dream and there, dancing in front of my eyes is a queen/formed out of flaws, with her eyes all gone odd and a rod bolted into her spine”) or you can wrap your head around how an indie folk rock band can challenge Wilco’s live dynamics (“Our Life Is Not A Movie Or A Maybe”) without behaving like The Band’s sole heirs. What drives The Stage Names (Jagjaguwar) is the brinksmanship between Sheff and band — the former’s chronic disappointment boiling from his throat while the fact their leader might soon keel over makes the band treat this like the final gig of their lives.

Damien Jurado opens.

— Steve Forstneger

Click here to download “Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly