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**Okkervil River - The Stage Names**
★★★★☆

By the time Okkervil River called it quits in 2020, Will Sheff's ambitious literary rock project had already cemented its place in the indie canon, but it was 2007's "The Stage Names" that represented their creative peak—a swirling, theatrical meditation on fame, identity, and the American entertainment machine that feels more prescient with each passing year.

Working backwards through Okkervil River's discography is like watching a brilliant novelist's rough drafts emerge from their masterpiece. While later albums like "I Am Very Far" and "Away" showed a band grappling with their own success and Sheff's evolving songwriting ambitions, "The Stage Names" captures them at that perfect intersection of artistic vision and raw energy. It's the sound of a band that had learned to harness their sprawling tendencies without losing their essential wildness.

The album arrived as the culmination of everything Okkervil River had been building toward since their formation in Austin in the late '90s. Following the breakthrough success of 2005's "Black Sheep Boy," which established them as torchbearers for a more literate strain of indie rock, expectations were sky-high. Sheff, never one to shy away from conceptual complexity, responded with an album that functions as both a love letter to and indictment of American show business, weaving together stories of forgotten entertainers, has-been actors, and the machinery that chews up dreams.

Musically, "The Stage Names" finds Okkervil River at their most dynamic and cohesive. The arrangements shimmer with theatrical flourishes—sweeping strings, honky-tonk piano, and Jonathan Meiburg's soaring harmonies—while maintaining the band's signature intensity. This is baroque pop with teeth, orchestral indie rock that never forgets its punk roots. Sheff's vocals range from tender crooning to full-throated wailing, often within the same song, perfectly complementing his dense, reference-heavy lyrics that name-drop everyone from John Alden to Lana Turner.

The album's towering achievement is "Unless It's Kicks," a seven-minute epic that builds from a gentle acoustic beginning into a full-band crescendo that feels like watching a Broadway show collapse in real-time. It's followed immediately by the devastating "John Alden Life," which uses the story of a forgotten vaudeville performer to explore themes of aging, irrelevance, and the American obsession with youth. These back-to-back tracks represent some of the finest songwriting of the 2000s indie boom.

"Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe" serves as the album's mission statement, with Sheff declaring "I never wanted to be a star" over a bed of strings that suggests otherwise. The song captures the central tension of "The Stage Names"—the simultaneous attraction to and revulsion from the spotlight that drives so much great art. Meanwhile, "Plus Ones" delivers the album's most immediate pleasures, a rollicking piano-driven number that could soundtrack a particularly literate honky-tonk.

The album's conceptual framework never overwhelms its emotional core. "A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene" and "You Can't Hold the Hand of a Rock and Roll Man" work as both character studies and personal confessions, while the closing "John Alden Life" provides a haunting coda that lingers long after the final notes fade.

In the context of 2007's musical landscape, "The Stage Names" stood out like a Victorian mansion in a subdivision of McMansions. While their peers were often content with ironic detachment or studied minimalism, Okkervil River embraced maximalism and earnestness in equal measure. The album influenced a generation of indie bands to think bigger and dig deeper, from The National's later orchestral experiments to Father John Misty's theatrical persona.

Today, "The Stage Names" reads like a prophecy about our current moment of manufactured celebrity and social media performance. Sheff's insights about the corrosive nature of fame and the American entertainment complex feel more relevant than ever. The album's exploration of identity, authenticity, and the stories we tell ourselves about success resonates in an era where everyone is performing their life for an audience.

While Okkervil River continued making compelling music until their end, they never again achieved the perfect balance of ambition and execution that defines "The Stage Names." It remains their masterpiece—a complex, rewarding album