Overkill River, Or ‘That’s an Awful Lot of Analysis for “Some Mid-Level Band”’ Part 2

Here we go, I’m stepping up to bat with our friends at Hey There’s a Bird In This Mirror! in analyzing Okkervil River’s The Stage Names and The Stand Ins. Some necessary reading:

Intro
Part 1

“This Art Is Not a Movie…or Maybe” - The Creative Process Songs

The songs:
Our Life is Not a Movie…Or Maybe
Unless It’s Kicks
Lost Coastlines
Singer/Songwriter

If you’ve ever seen the documentary Comedian, you would’ve heard Jerry Seinfeld tell a story to a younger comedian about what the struggle of their craft is all about. He tells the story of the Glenn Miller orchestra, on their way to play a show in the dead of winter. When their bus breaks down on the side of the road, they have to walk the last mile in the snow and bitter cold holding their instruments in hand, dressed in tuxedos, wet, cold and miserable. On the way to the concert hall, they come upon a house. Through the window, they can see a family sitting around a dinner table, a fire roaring in the background, kids nicely dressed, just a Norman Rockwell-esque scene. And in the cold, dripping from snow and shivering while holding their instruments, one of the musicians turns to another and whispers, “Can you believe people live like this?”

For some reason, this story came to mind when I was digging through the songs listed here, all having to do with the creative process told through the eyes of Okkervil River’s lead songwriter, Will Sheff. I’ve always held the belief that there are two kinds of people in life: the kind of people who do things they love because it makes them affirmatively happy, and the kind of people who do the things they love because if they didn’t, they’d be miserable. And there’s really no question that Sheff belongs to the latter group, as I wouldn’t go so far to call him a consistently happy guy. And through the narrative scheme of The Stage Names and The Stand Ins, Sheff and co. kind of mirror those players in the Miller orchestra…there’s a certain misery in the creative process, with everything that goes into it and everything that comes out of it. But in the end, there’s a certain glory and celebration to it.

It would be kind of pointless to start anywhere other than with “Our Life Is Not a Movie…or Maybe.” Even examining the title alone, Sheff is already playing with the listener. The title is a back and forth pondering of the self-importance of an artist, whether that artist is the universal creative mind, or specifically the players of Okkervil River. Some lyrics to ponder:

“No fade in: film begins on a kid in the big city.
And no cut to a costly parade (that’s for him only!).
No dissolve to a sliver of grey (that’s his new lady!)
where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane of some great movie.”

You’d think that the song is simply speaking on the fabricated world that celebrity gives someone, a lead singer on stage lost in his own reverie and drowning in his own arrogance. But as the song ends, Sheff brays:

“From the speakers your fake masterpiece is serenely dribbling.
When the air around your chair fills with heat, that’s the flames licking
beneath the clock on the clean mantelpiece. It’s got a calm clicking,
like a pro at his editing suite takes two weeks stitching up some bad movie.”

Switch the perspective from the singer on stage, lost in his fantasy, into the manufactured world of the studio musician relegated to creating a consumer product, and you start to realize the twisted irony that Sheff creates. Where at first, the fantasy could be seen as the arrogant, haughty actions of the man-child, we start to realize that there’s a childlike purity in getting lost in the music, or in any artistic endeavor. One that’s at least preferred to the reality of creating music in such a controlled, metered, and stifled atmosphere. There’s an innocence lost in the realization that the life in pursuit of artistic intentions will be as much about breaking down your craft into sound files, tracks, retakes, and cutting room castoffs probably more so than the fantasy of losing yourself in the spotlights of a concert, serenaded by the cheers of fans. And yet, the former is a prerequisite for the latter. The product has to exist for the artist to be able to show it to others, and while it may be more fun to strut on stage and bask in the glow of ephemeral adoration, the reality of being an artist is that it’s a grind, it requires dedication, effort, and tireless commitment to the unexciting elements of your art. In this instance, the title, when comparing life to a movie, is apt in that the finished product is always much more glamorous and seemingly pure than the actual process it takes to complete it. Maybe it’s like a movie, maybe it’s not, depending on the angle you look at it from.

“Unless It’s Kicks” is a sensible follow-up to “Movie…,” in that the only logical reaction the artist could have is ignorance to this structure. Where “Movie…” introduced this concept of double-edged sword of the creative process, “Kicks” takes it into a visceral realm. What does the music do to you? How do we react to it on a purely emotional level? Because at the core of creativity, there is a self-awareness of creating this for an audience, even when the audience is the artist himself:

“What hits against this chest unless it’s a sick man’s hand
From some mid-level band
He’s been driving too long”

The only thing that can corrupt the music, or the art, is the awareness of an artist who fails to keep that perspective on the process, a band that’s been playing too long, one that’s been made sick with the knowledge that “Movie…” sought to expose and to obscure in the same breath. But where a part of “Movie…” could be taken to say that the obliviousness of the artist was a bad thing, here Sheff shows that the ignorance is bliss attitude could be a boon:

“And I know it’s a lie
But I’ll still give my love
Hey, my heart’s on the line
For your hands to pluck off”

It’s worth mentioning that the driving instrumentation behind both “Movie…” and “Kicks” mimic the earnestness in Sheff’s voice, creating a kind of respectable vulnerability in his display of reckless abandon in losing himself in the art. Being that the Stage Names is showing us the perspective of the creative process from the artist himself, it would make sense that the oblivious artist would, at least in his own mind, have a soundtrack of determination, of yelling to the rafters even when he knows he’s wrong, or doomed for failure. As the page turns to The Stand Ins, we go beyond the first person view of the creator, and see those that surround him.
“Singer/Songwriter” sees a turn from the somewhat vulnerable, earnest voice of Sheff, into the raspy, vicious snarl that’s appropriately backed a stutter strummed acoustic guitar riff, with the sliding electric fill ins. Everything about it shows a certain sarcasm regarding those that surround the artists. Sheff growls:

“You’ve got taste, you’ve got taste
What a waste that that’s all that you have”

Taking this one of two ways, it could be the audience revolting against the artist for making a patently false product, or it could be the artist revolting against those that ignore his pure product in favor of what some critics, scholars, or fans may regard as better, for whatever reasons. Regardless, Sheff is now lobbing bombs outside of the inherent quality of the music he creates, attacking the things that his product is judged against, angry that some may think that “good taste” doesn’t equate with liking his own creations.

“And this thing you once said disappeared from my head
In the time that it took to be amazed
And this thing you once did might have dazzled the kids
But the kids once grown up are gonna walk away
And your world is gonna change nothing”

The last refrain rings out, as Sheff repeats the futility of his, and everyone else’s actions. Nothing changes, even though nothing is the same. Moving to “Lost Coastlines,” the anger is replaced by sadness. The song is as much about parting ways with a crowd, as it is about parting ways with your art and the accoutrements that have become fixtures in your life. Where the songs from The Stage Names spoke of the glory of fame and fortune, the allures of the parades of fans and the beautiful woman that the artist may find from fame and success, “Coastlines” now speaks of waving goodbye to friends, carrying bags on buses and planes, the listlessness of traveling and the ever changing players that fade in and out of the band’s consciousness. As the song ends, Sheff and Meiburg sing with no purpose:

“And every night finds us rocking and rolling on waves wild and wide, well we have lost our way, nobody’s gonna say it outright. Just go la la la la la la la la la…..”

And back again we are to the original point. That creative pursuits may bring you fame, fortune, fans, success, and any other self aggrandizing forms of validation, Sheff’s sentiment is that they sing a song simply because they don’t know what else to do. The reason that “Coastlines” works so well, is that it is inhabited by sadness, loss, regret, guilt, and yet the conclusion is that they sing a song because it keeps them buoyant until they reach the next stop, not knowing whether the next stop may be the last stop. This sentiment only further enforced by the fact that now Meiburg is off doing Shearwater, and Sheff is still helming Okkervil without his long-time partner.

The lasting sentiment that these songs weave together is that the creative process is a living, breathing organism, adapting and changing regardless of your wishes as fans, or their wishes as artists. There is a half life on the sustainability of all art, that at some point people will simply stop listening to a record, stop reading a book, stop looking at a painting. And yet, the life of an artist is cursed to keep perpetuating this cycle in the pursuit of something timeless, and blessed to have those moments where life is like a movie, as much as he’s cursed to have those moments where it will be denied to him, where the creative endeavors we seek to finish will tear apart the fabric of our lives as we know it. Best friends become strangers, fans become critics, critics become fans, and eventually all is forgotten.

But overall, in the end, we sing a song together, because sometimes it’s all we can do from going mad. Because if we didn’t do it, we’d be miserable. And because like those orchestra players, you really can’t believe that people would live any other way.