Okkervil River: The Stand Ins

Will Sheff has been known to balk at the term "lit-rock,"

but there's no getting around the fact that the Okkervil River frontman can be

wordy. On last year's mostly awesome arts-and-entertainment deconstruction The

Stage Names,

Sheff's punk sneering and stalker crooning occasionally came off like a chat

with a brilliant, well-read, too-talkative friend: At a certain point, it

became tough to pay attention. Remarkably, though, the album's "sequel," The

Stand Ins,

feels relatively uncluttered. Sheff's narratives are still generous with

details about porn stars ("Starry Stairs" finds them "slithering up rose

corridors") and bland rich kids ("you wrote your thesis on the Gospel of Thomas"),

but they're also more focused than before, sharply describing characters who

embrace the lies they find in art or in their heads for the sake of sanity.

Backing away from the eager-to-astonish, Arcade Fire-like grandeur of the last

album, the songs often opt for the swagger and twang of '70s AM radio,

confining much of the pathos to instrumental interludes that fittingly share

their name with the album title: Like a sunset, movie score, or storybook

ending, they're beautiful stand-ins for drama that the real world doesn't

provide.