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Okkervil River
 "I personally feel I've grown quite a bit," says Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff. The Texan band - variously described as folk-punk, alt country, indie folk and a whole host of other mostly meaningless things - have been together almost ten years now, and have just released their fifth full length, 'The Stage Names'.
For Sheff, listening back to the previous records, whilst not something he does very often, is like "looking at pictures" of himself as a child: it's a little uncomfortable, but ultimately it shows where he's come from, and where he's going. "I feel that my singing is much better, and I know my playing is much better," he muses. "I do feel I'm able to do things more subtly than I was before, like I have a lighter touch, and that's gratifying."
It also means that Sheff is pushing to try things he "might not have attempted before" - an interesting development, considering the fact the band have always exuded a strange kind of confidence. This time around, though, Sheff is attempting to come to terms with his own tastes as much as anything else. "I had a real phobia for pop music," he explains, "which is really funny because I always loved pop music to listen to. But like many hardcore purists, I had this idea pop music was somehow less legitimate of an art form than very serious songs like Leonard Cohen songs.
"As I'm getting older," he continues, "I've started to like Leonard Cohen less, and he's started to seem less of a mature artist to me than... The Supremes, or someone like that. I listen to some pop music and it sounds far more wise and less compelled to try and impress you.
"And sometimes," Sheff adds with a laugh, "you get older and you think, 'I don't fucking care what people think about me - my most important thing to me is making music that I think is exciting and fun'."
'The Stage Names' is the band's attempt to pay tribute to pop, Motown, girl groups, British invasion and glam rock; it's a record about "entertainment, and fandom - what it means to be a fan, and what fandom doesn't save you from". It's also an attempt to "incorporate [those styles] into a world that referenced them" - there's a TVC-16 (a new model, one assumes), a 51st way to leave your lover and, most startlingly, a re-imagining and reappropriation of Sloop John B at the end of John Allyn Smith Sails.
"I think it's one of my favourite songs I've written," Sheff says. "I knew it needed to be on the record; that it was in some ways the cornerstone of everything the record is trying to do - it's the soul of the record.
"You can become obsessed - God knows I have - with pop music that is extremely meaningful to you, and it becomes like your own personal theme song," he adds. "I don't know if you've ever felt that you have a song that is 'your song', and couples of course will have 'our song'. I felt like sometimes I have my song, my own personal theme songs, and there are certain songs I come back to again and again in my life. The thing with a song is it becomes yours - I mean, sure, Every Breath You Take by The Police is meant to be about a stalker, but every freaking corny wedding dance in the world has seen couples all over the world adopt it as their wedding song and does it really matter that it's about a stalker? People take things and they make them their own. Who's to say if they're wrong? That's the beauty of pop music: it belongs to everyone."
All pop music - that includes Okkervil River's music too, which Sheff actually quite likes. "I do my best to present my songs in a way I think makes them work the best," he smiles, "like if you were cooking and you tried to prepare your meal with a really good wine - that's like the artwork or something. But once it's out there, it belongs to anyone, and I'm just flattered that anyone would even give a shit about it."
Alistair Wallis
'The Stage Names' is out now on Spunk.
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