Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Album Review - Okkervil River "The Stand Ins"

Pitchfork had an album review of Okkervil River's sophomoric release "The Stand Ins". They received an 8.0 from Pitchfork which is quite high in their rating system. Excerpt from the article if you're too lazy to click the link:
Sheff wants to look beyond common pop song notions to discover something truer and more essential, no matter how disillusioning it may be, which is the central, enthralling contradiction for Okkervil River: Even as they ruthlessly deconstruct pop music, they make great pop music. The darker Sheff gets, the more honest he sounds and the more absorbing the song. By that equation, the stand-out on The Stand Ins is "Pop Lie", an exquisitely bleak dismantling of singer-songwriter pretensions. The pop singer lies in his songs, "and you're lying when you sing along!" (Hey, Hold Steady...) It's not hard to imagine a venue full of excited fans singing along, although it's difficult to determine whether he would view their participation as a bitter irony or a sincerely funny cosmic joke. Or if he would just smile and enjoy the moment, knowing that any listener can take that pop lie and make it true.

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