Cheers, fellow Okkervil River Navigational Auxiliary Guildsmember,

Hope this latest ORNAG update finds you well and ready for summer. We’re gearing up for it with details (including the release date!) for Okkervil River’s new album and benefit shows:

THE NEW ALBUM

Okkervil River’s new album will be called “The Stage Names” and will be released nationally by Jagjaguwar on August 7. Earlier this month, we posted the tracklisting and album art on Pitchfork along with the first single from the record, “Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe.” In case you missed it, here’s the album art and the tracklisting:

Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe
Unless It’s Kicks
A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene
Savannah Smiles
Plus Ones
A Girl in Port
You Can’t Hold the Hand of a Rock and Roll Man
Title Track
John Allyn Smith Sails

The album art is entirely hand-embroidered by William Schaff, and there will be a special edition of the record containing some additional material. Check out Jagjaguwar’s press release about the album here.

WILL’S NOTES ON “OUR LIFE IS NOT A MOVIE OR MAYBE”

“‘Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe’ is the song the label felt would be the best first single from “The Stage Names,” a decision that was hard for us to make after living so closely with the record for so long. This track is actually one of the oldest ones I wrote for ‘The Stage Names.’ Some fans probably already heard it in a slower solo version I’ve been playing for over a year now. The song was actually written to be played fast - I remember originally going for a John-Cale-meets-the-Cars vibe or something, though the finished song isn’t much like that at all. I still like playing it in the slower version, which works better solo even though it tends to be almost seven minutes long. It was also the first thing we did on the first day of recording for the record, and I think the version we ended up releasing is take 2 or 3. Some trivia about the recording, for those interested: the big kick-and-snare hits you hear are the sound of all six members of the band playing drums simultaneously, with a mic placed in a bathroom down the hall. For Brian’s guitar part in the middle section, we varied the tape speed as he was recording to get an unpredictably wobbly sound. The vocals for this song were extremely difficult to record because for whatever reason I’d pitched them in an incredibly high register and then everyone liked hearing them that way. The whirring sound at the very start of the song was actually e-mailed to our mastering guy and added as an overdub in mastering, a very uncommon (perhaps because it’s so stupid and time-inefficient) practice we’ve used on every full-length album we’ve made.”

UPCOMING SHOWS

On June 10, Okkervil River plays at Neumos in Seattle on behalf of Noise for the Needy, an organization for children affected by HIV and AIDS.

On July 13, Will plays solo at Brattle Theatre in Boston, debuting some new songs from the record in solo versions.

On July 14, the full band performs at Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire, marking Will’s first show in his home state. Organized by fellow New Hampshireite Matt Bonner of the San Antonio Spurs, the show benefits the Concord Boys and Girls’ club.

And, finally, Okkervil River plays on July 15 at Jake’s Bar & Grille in Providence, Rhode Island, with William Schaff’s marching band. Set in a neighborhood bar, this is sure to lack any trace of the Capitol Center for the Arts’ formalism). Ogle the black-and-white version of the poster William Schaff made for the show here:

Oh, and stay tuned for details on Okkervil River’s fall tour in support of “The Stage Names.”

YOUTUBE VIDEO

Here’s a cool youtube clip of the band playing “Lady Liberty” at Rice University when the power went out — enjoy!

NEW MP3 BLOG ENTRY

Will posted his latest MP3 blog entry below this update.

As always, thanks for reading, and take care,

Okkervil River Navigational Auxiliary Guild

www.ornag.com

Questions, comments, and the like may be directed to Captain Jason at guild@jound.com

The Cookies
Only To Other People

The Lovelites
How Can I Tell My Mom and Dad?

I am a tremendous sucker for girl-group pop. I guess I get this from my mom, in her own way an armchair pop/populist music philosopher who seems to remember the lyrics to every song ever recorded by the likes of the Shirelles and the Chantels and pretty much all the other “elles” that ever took sanctuary from the rough streets of places like Detroit and the Bronx to commit their passionately felt and virtuosically decried “shoop shoops” and “sha la las” to tape. Almost as thematically rich a genre as the old-time murder ballad, the girl group song could address any number of seemingly contradictory topics. There are girl-group anthems of nascent feminist independence, like Donna Lynn’s (Jagger-Richards-penned) “I’d Much Rather Be With the Girls,” as well as deeply politically-incorrect girl-group numbers like the Crystals classic “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss).” These songs could explore sometimes surprisingly adult sexuality (as both of the aforementioned songs do), they could celebrate community, they could bemoan isolation, they could dredge up childhood memories, they could imaginatively explore the idea of death. All of it, of course, in a candy coating (but the real stuff – no high-fructose corn syrup here), and all of it under two and a half minutes long. Which is no mean feat. You listen to a lot of these songs and you remember how concise pop music can be, how conceptually ambitious, how musically inventive, how raw, how fun, how passionate. There’s not much that’s as good as the classic girl-group stuff these days, and when my friends play me stuff like the Pipettes it’s so self-referential and slick that I just get bored. It’s just another force for cynicism in the world, as if we needed another. And what’s so crazy about girl group stuff is that I always imagine that the people who wrote it and recorded it as the most cynical people alive. They must have been, to rely so calculatingly on formula, to think lyrics so silly would fly, to think girls were that dumb. Of course, a big part of the perceived tension in girl-group songs comes from the fact that some crusty middle-aged creep of a man composed these odes for these dewy young things to belt out, but the miracle of the best girl-group stuff derives from the fact that these girls, with their amazing but often very obviously untrained, overenthusiastic, regionally-accented voices – voices that were totally sincere because it didn’t occur to them to be anything but sincere – saved these songs and made them eternal, turned them into high art. They triumphed over all those creeps and their triumph was such that it still stands, towering mockingly over most of today’s music that has the audacity to imagine itself shameless commercial pop. Ha!

Anyway, to wrap up, here are two girl group songs I just chose because I thought their themes were cool. The Lovelites’ “How Can I Tell My Mom and Dad” uses a soul backing - so warmly lush and dripping with lovely harmonies that it’s almost womblike - to tell in very realistic terms the jarring tale of an unwanted pregnancy. Meanwhile, in “Only To Other People” the Cookies outline a theme so rich that we shamelessly stole it for our first single from the new record.

[Incidentally, both of these are taken from the Rhino Compilation “One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found,” the best compilation I have heard in the last several years. It repays every penny of your investment and is beautifully packaged to boot.]

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