Austin Sound

This past Saturday, Okkervil River delivered an absolutely epic ACL aftershow at Emo’s, which included a cameo by former Okkervil-er Jonathan Meiburg on the incredible “Lost Coastlines” from the freshly released The Stand Ins. The group also just released a video for the song, which you can check out below. In keeping with their meta-theme of fame and media, the video presents the guys tv talking heads, which is both a little awkward and awesome.

Humor me as I get in at least one good metaphor before the real “criticism” kicks in: the Okkervil River “leftover album” concept is a lot like Thanksgiving Dinner. After feasting on any number of delicious Pilgrim-themed foodstuffs, the average American spends a good week and a half eating cold turkey sandwiches every day for lunch because, no, even a solid party of 10 couldn’t finish off that forty-pound turkey. This is colloquially known (at least in my family) as the “leftover principle”; essentially, a tasty turkey yields a tasty week of lunch meat, same as a brilliant album yields equally brilliant leftovers, even they aren’t quite as good as when they were hot out of the oven. To put it even more bluntly, if you liked The Stage Names, you’ll probably like The Stand Ins.

In preparation of the release next week of The Stand Ins, Okkervil River has created a series of videos featuring some of their favorite artists covering songs from the album. Among those that are posted on their newly set-up Youtube page are Bon Iver doing “Blue Tulip”, David Vandervelde with “Singer Songwriter”, Bird of Youth offering “Pop Lie”, and Jack Ladder with “Starry Stairs.” There is also one with Will Sheff and the New Pornographers A.C. Newman trading vocals on “Lost Coastlines,” which we posted Okkervil’s mp3 of a few weeks ago. Watch the video below.

This week, Pitchfork premiered a preview (that’s a mouthful) of Okkervil River’s new album and The Stage Names sequel, The Stand Ins, which has subsequently been sweeping across the interwebs in anticipation of it’s September 9 release on Jagjaguwar. “Lost Coastlines” is easily one of the best songs from the new album, which, as big of Okkervil fans as we are around round, follows it’s predecessor fairly closely to the hip and doesn’t compare quite as well. Still there are some fantastic songs, like the download below.

Following up on the announcement that Okkervil River will be releasing the companion album to last year’s The Stage Names this September, the band has revealed the track listing as well as the cover art. Judging from the song titles, The Stand Ins seems to fall thematically in line with the previous LP, though we’re excited to here whatever the song “On Tour With Zykos” might have to offer!

The album art corresponds to the The Stage Names, apparently depicting the dreadful image of what’s going on with the body attached that hand sticking out of the water. Take a gander for yourself after the jump, as well as the tracklisting:

Following up last year’s extraordinary effort, The Stage Names, Okkervil River has announced they’ll have another album out this September 9. Called The Stand Ins, the album appears to be a sequel to their post-modern contemplations in the same vein as the Black Sheep Boy Appendix culled songs recorded for the original album that didn’t make the cut.