Jack In The Box said:
The Stage Names is one of the best albums of the year, easily
for me is better than "Black Sheep Boy", whoa
YES! Stage Names is far and away my favorite album so far this year. Okkervil River just bumped Idlewild out of the #1 spot on my overall artists charts on Last FM this week actually (Idlewild has held that spot virtually the entire time i've used Last FM).
While I admittedly would recommend their entire catalog, The Stage Names is a very special album. If you have any interest in it, you owe it to yourself to buy it, learn the lyrics, and give it some time to let the entire work sink it. You will not be disappointed.
Please allow me to provide 9 examples as to why The Stage Names is a masterpiece:
1. It's just a life story, so there's no climax. No more new territory, so pull away the IMAX. In the slot that you sliced through the scene there was no shyness. In the plot that you passed through your teeth there was no pity. No fade in: film begins on a kid in the big city. And no cut to a costly parade that's for him only. No dissolve to a sliver of grey - that's his new lady, where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane of some great movie. (Hey, I'd watch it!)
2. What pulls your body down, and that is quicksand. So climb out quick, hand over hand, before your mouth's all filled up. What picks you up from down unless it's tricks, man? When I've been fixed I am convinced that I will not get so broke up again. And on a seven day high, that heavenly song punches right through my mind and just hums through my blood.
3. I want a smile like a glistening shard. I want a kiss that's as sharp as a knife. The day expires, and the dry, cracked, trembling lips God saw fit to put this kiss inside, I push them up to you. I'd like to bear witness to a light that is fine and is filling the cryingest eyes, grace in each face that is making the wastedest, brokenest ones fairly fly, love that is innocent of that old cynical, covetous, cancerous vibe, and a beauty that annihilates all life like it's lived in these nights, holding your hatred tight like a sign that you're right or you're strong. When your doors are shut tight, I will dream you tonight, and my dream will just sweep you along.
4. Midnight late last week. my daughter's diary. Didn't know what it might be until it was open. I only read one page and then put it away. Talk about your big mistakes - hey Shan, nice going.
5. No one wants a tune about the 100th luftballoon that was seen shooting from the window of your room, to be a spot against the sky's colossal gloom and land, deflated, in some neighbor state that's strewn with 99 others.
6. Well, 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 a guest. I'm not a part, with my tender head, with my easy heart. These several years out on the sea have made me empty, cold, and clear. Pour yourself into me.
7. She said, "I'm done with looking back, and you look your age - which is thirty-seven, by the way, and not twenty-eight. And fucking let them stare, because at this point I don't care. I have been your bride stripped bare since '98. And our silver-screen affair, it weighs less to me than air. It's a gas now. It's a laugh just how far several mil can take it."
8. A Hollywood Babylon bike-a-thon for breakdancers all broken down in their beds, now intravenously fed from a bag hanging over their heads.
9. And I knew that my last lines were gone, while, stupidly, I lingered on. Oh, but wise men know when it's time to go, and so I should too. And so I fly into the brightest winter sun of this frozen town. I'm stripped down to move on, my friends: I'm gone. I hear my father fall, and I hear my mother call, and I hear the others all whispering, come home. I'm sorry to go. I loved you all so, but this is the worst trip I've ever been on.
The 1,2,3 punch of Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe, Unless It's Kicks, and A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene is one of the best opening three song combos of any recent album I've been a fan of in ages. This is the kind of album where if I listen to one song, I usually end up listening to all the rest of them too. The songs work fantasticall individually, and more importantly in the context of the album's concept and theme. There are rockers, heart-breaking moments, and sections in songs where I almost want to stand up out of my chair and pound my fists into the air and scream "YES!!!!!!!" when I hear them. The first time I heard the "So hoist up the John B. sail!" line kick in right after the section I posted above as #9, I think I honestly did actually come out of my chair.
