Okkervil River's Stage Names Are Still Serious

08/16/07 5:30pm

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Okkervil River songwriter Will Sheff is a miserable individual after hearing his tortured howls on his band's acclaimed 2005 disc, Black Sheep Boy.

Tales of death and woe were just as rampant on the group's three prior albums, though none of the characters involved in Sheff's fictions ever quite sank to the depths of despair that awaited his protagonist on Black Sheep's penultimate track, "So Come Back, I Am Waiting." It was a culmination of pain and suffering that recently had Lou Reed calling Okkervil one of his favourite contemporary bands.

For Sheff, though, there's a big difference between being serious and depressing. While it's easy to label him a tortured soul, he insists that quite the opposite is true — a point that he set out to prove when he penned his band's latest disc, The Stage Names.

"With Black Sheep Boy," he recalls, "I wanted to make a record that you'd put on at two in the morning.

"With The Stage Names, I wanted to make a record that you'd put on at noon or 6 p.m. — a during-the-day sort of record. My friend, the other day — I ran into him at the bar — he was like, 'Man, it was Saturday and it was noon and I was really stoned, and I put your record on.' And I was like, 'This is a Saturday noon kind-of record.' That made me feel really good because that's how I wanted it to be."

If it's true that Sheff was just playing a part when he stepped into the shoes of the Black Sheep Boy, then the themes that weave together The Stage Names' up-tempo folk-rock songs seem a fitting follow-up.The majority of the tracks see Sheff tackling imagery from a more modern world of stages and the silver screen through a veil of pop-cultural references — a marked departure from Black Sheep Boy, a disc replete with antiquated references to towers and fairytales.

"The songs just seemed to have a performative quality to the way that they were written," Sheff struggles to explain. "That lent itself well, I guess, to themes that had to do with movies and TV and books.

"I didn't sit around planning it. It just turned out to be what the songs wanted as I was going on working. I started to realize that there was a theme of people being struck dumb by art, but also a theme of art falling pathetically short of peoples' expectations of it."

While The Stage Names features definite shift in Okkervil's often dire aesthetic, Sheff is quick to point out that, lyrically, the songs are no less serious than anything he's written before. Allusions to break-ups, life-altering mistakes and death are still present, but here they're coated in enough melodrama that they almost sound sweet.

"I'd say it's a very serious record," Sheff insists earnestly, "but it tries to take the serious themes and deal with them in a light, mirthful kind of way.

"That's a really hard thing to do. It freaked me out to do something like that. It's hard to, instead of grappling with the issues, dance around them and drape them with tempo and put a funny hat on them and laugh at them a little bit."

Though it seems like a celebratory romp on the surface, the album's closing track, "John Allyn Smith Sails," is perhaps one of the darkest tales Sheff has ever put to paper. Part historical anecdote and part improvised biography, it examines the life and death of American poet John Berryman, who, as an ultimate failure, was unable to get his own suicide right.

In 1972, a depressed Berryman jumped from Minnesota's Washington Avenue Bridge but missed the water, dying, not by drowning or trauma, but by smothering, according to news reports.

It's a story that became more real for Sheff during a temporary move to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he laboured over The Stage Names' songs.

"I love John Berryman and I was reading John Berryman a lot when I was writing Black Sheep Boy," he states. "On the way to New York, I stopped at Washington Avenue Bridge and kind of had this moment there, and I think I was just really moved by the guy's work and that made me want to write a song.

"I think the way John Berryman incorporates references to popular song and references to his life that are sort of camouflaged and changed around, and the way he's really jokey while being serious — all of these things are really important to me."

Okkervil River take their dark humour on the road next month, making four stops in Canada. Here's where you can catch them:

Sept. 9 Vancouver, BC @ Richard's On Richards
Sept. 21 Toronto, ON @ Lee's Palace
Sept. 22 Hamilton, ON @ Pepper Jack Cafe
Sept. 23 Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa