Okkervil River : Stand Ins

Okkervil River's 2008 full-length album the Stand Ins, is the sequel to 2007's critically acclaimed The Stage Names, which Pitchfork praised as '...one of the year's best,' with the New York Times proclaiming, 'this band's musical arsenal keeps getting fuller.' The Stand Ins was recorded in Austin and produced by longtime collaborator Brian Beattie and Okkervil River. The album features 11 songs and includes the track 'Lost Coastlines,' on which Sheff and recently departed Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater share a duet on the joys and hardships of trying to keep the band together. Like artist William Schaff's embroidered artwork, which depicts what's happening underneath the stage names' front-cover quicksand hand, The Stand Ins, picks up exactly where part one left off but also delves deeper into the story and theme of 'the stage names'. It is a full-length, fleshed-out, deeply ambitious labor of love.