Edythe [furryrabbits]

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I, like many of my music friends, have been completely caught up in Okkervil River’s The Stand Ins and The Stage Names. Yesterday, Fred posted Plus Ones, pointing out its reference to Nena’s 99 Luftballons. I posted a comment suggesting that the song was littered with other fun musical references. Ends up there’s even more there than I realized.

This morning I listened to OR’s lead man, Will Sheff, guest DJ on NPR’s All Songs Considered. It’s worth listening to the entire thing, but my post today is an excerpt featuring Sheff detailing the many musical references included in the music on these two albums.

There’s, like, musical quotes throughout both records. Lyrical quotes. Plus Ones, off of The Stage Names, is made up almost entirely out of references to other songs. And there’s references, you know, when we were recording that song we were thinking, let’s make that snare drum sound like A Rolling Stone; let’s put She’s a Rainbow, the Rolling Stones quote in the end. You know like we were just geeking out on all the ways we could hide little tidbits in there.

I also learned that both albums were written and recorded at the same time. Listening to them, this now seems obvious. They were going to release them as a double album, but decided instead to stagger their release by a year. For me, they really are a double-album. While I’ve had The Stage Names since its release, it really only grabbed me after I was totally taken by The Stand Ins and needed to hear more of Okkervil River.

I’ve heard Okkervil River referred to as a “hyper-lit” band, along with some of my other faves including The Hold Steady, The Decemberists and The Mountain Goats. All great, smart, literate and lyrical music.