The Stand Ins

From their linked LP covers — an embroidered art piece by longtime collaborator William Schaff (see also the sleeves of Songs: Ohia and Godspeed You! Black Emperor) — to their dense, tightly-wound storylines, Okkervil River's last two records, 2007's The Stage Names and a freshly minted The Stand Ins, are essentially a fat-free double album. They're also striking in-progress documents of a band that continues to sharpen its bookish but brutally honest indie rock with every disc. (Let's just say there's a reason Lou Reed handpicked these Austin natives to open a key New York City show in 2007.)

eMusic's Andrew Parks buzzed Sheff in the busy week leading up to the band's fall tour — their biggest national trek yet — and discussed everything from the recent departure of keyboardist Jonathan Meiburg (who left to front Shearwater fulltime) to what it's like crafting two complicated art-rock cuts about a suicidal porn star.

On writing concept records without a clear concept:

If I were to sit here and [tell you the record's themes], it'd be beside the point. I'd be kinda lying and selling the reason I made the record short, which is not to get across a certain idea in a sentence. If things were like that, I'd tell you that sentence, you'd write it down, print it up and everything would be fine. I could go back to my life and do my laundry then. [Albums are] not just ideas; [they're] a certain feeling, certain kinds of imagery.

On the work that goes into writing such literate lyrics:

It depends on the song. Something like "Title Track" [from The Stage Names] was written really fast lyrically — in like 20 minutes. And then something like "Starry Stairs" was written over a long period of time. In fact, the lyrics in the original version are 95 percent different than the final one. I totally rewrote the song when I realized what it should be. Editing is really important and nice [when it comes to writing]. It can be an inspired creative act, not just tough flogging, you know?

On obsessing over the sequencing of The Stand Ins and The Stage Names:

We spent a lot of time figuring out what songs would work on each record, to make them both sound cohesive. There are two songs with the Shannon Wilsey character, for instance ("Starry Stairs" and "Savannah Smiles"). And if we had put both of them on one record, one-fourth of it would be about her. That would skew the whole album, you know? It's far better to start a story on one record and finish it on the second. There's a lot of that happening here, a lot of songs deliberately answer songs from The Stage Names.

On the lyrical connection between "Starry Stairs" and "Savannah Smiles":

On "Savannah Smiles," you're seeing a third person view of the Shanon Wilsey character — at the beginning of her life as a child, and a little bit of her young adult life. "Starry Stairs" is a first-person story pulled from her viewpoint at the end of her life, looking back at her decision [to commit suicide in 1994]. She's basically saying "fuck you" to anyone who has something bad to say about her.

On "Singer Songwriter":

This was actually the last song we recorded for the album. I wrote it fast and we went into a studio while we were touring with the New Pornographers. It speaks for itself a little bit. Sonically, we wanted to give it a trashy production style — like the [Rolling] Stones in their early stuff, when they didn't play very well and things were recorded live. So there's a kind of rave-up in the song with a train beat. Everything on this song was recorded live in one morning, including the vocals. We did the whole thing in Indiana, at a Bloomington studio John Cougar Mellencamp has used many times.

On "Touring With Zykos":

This song is very much an answer to "A Girl In Port" (from The Stage Names), which has a certain swaggering machismo to it. "On Touring With Zykos" was written from a female point of view and takes the wind out of the sails of a song like that. It deflates it. That said, this song was fun to do. It was actually hard for us to wait to put it out, but I just thought it would work better on The Stand Ins.

We're about to go on tour with Zykos again, which I'm really looking forward to. (Vocalist/guitarist) Mike Booher is a really great friend of mine, and fun to travel with, so it should be great.

On "Lost Coastlines":

Jonathan and I worked on this song at the same time as "Blue Tulip" and "Calling and Not Calling My Ex." It touches on a lot of things, including his decision to leave the band and pursue Shearwater. Things are as they should be now. When I was writing songs for Shearwater (Ed. Note: Meiburg and Sheff co-founded it), a lot of focus was taken away from Jonathan's contributions even though he was always steering the ship. Because Okkervil had more momentum at that particular moment, he didn't get the recognition he should have. So an easy, obvious solution at that time was for me to take a step back [from Shearwater]. Jonathan is so busy now with Shearwater that it wouldn't make a lot of sense for him to stay in Okkervil River.

On "Pop Lie":

We're really into bands like Rockpile … and are always looking for a middle ground between chaos and straight-up pop music. Because of the subject matter, we tried to go really overboard with this track. Like, "How about some syncopated handclaps here? Or four synthesizers playing at once there?" It was a lot of making bad decisions on purpose.

On "Calling and Not Calling My Ex":

If you've ever known someone that's dated a celebrity, all anyone ever wants to talk about is that celebrity — they became defined by that. After a while, you gotta wonder what it feels like to be them. I've heard a lot of bitterness from people [in that position], as well as a lot of naiveté. A song like "Calling and Not Calling My Ex" is like a gender switch/counterpoint to a song like "Song About a Star" from [2003's] Down the River of Golden Dreams. It's sorta like someone realizing that their ex has passed them by and outpaced them in their career. It's a strange position for a man to be in, yet I wanted this song to be kind, sweet, thoughtful and caring, as opposed to something like "Love to a Monster"— one of the songs that we did for The Stage Names but didn't put on either record. It's soaked in bitterness and anger. We didn't know where to put it, so it's kinda just out there in the Internet world.