OKKERVIL RIVER THE STAGE NAMES Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy was one of the most acclaimed releases of 2005. Kelefa Sanneh Unless It’s Kicks wrote in The New York Times that “Will Sheff, leader of the Austin indie-rock band Okkervil River, A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene writes like a novelist.”With their newest release, The Stage Names, Okkervil River dynamite the Savannah Smiles walls of Black Sheep Boy’s gothic, moss-walled castle from the inside to let in the glaring sun. Plus Ones Where Black Sheep Boy presented a fairytale of dark babbling streams and high distant towers, The A Girl in Port Stage Names takes place in an unmistakably modern world, where snowy televisions blast into You Can’t Hold the Hand of a Rock cheap hotels the spectral images of soap stars endlessly betraying each other, where losers in late- night bars languish to the beat of their favorite songs, where broken-down actresses place their and Roll Man final cell calls from lonely mansions high in the hills. Riddled with characters real and fake, with Title Track true-life biography and brazenly fabricated autobiography, with the relics of high culture and the John Allyn Smith Sails crumpled-up trash of low culture, The Stage Names is a cinemascopic take on the meaning of entertainment. And, crucially, it entertains. Reverberant with echoes of Motown snap and girl- group pop, redolent with ripe whiffs of dirty rock ‘n’ roll, shining with the shimmy of Bo Diddley, with the shimmer of the Velvets, with the swagger of the Faces, and with a glittery sprinkling of cheap perfume over the top of it all to disguise the stink, The Stage Names is a relentlessly-paced and ruthlessly thrilling journey. CATALOG #: JAG110 RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 7, 2007 Written on the beds and beat-up couches of hotels, guest-rooms, and fourth-floor walk-ups FORMAT: CD/LP/2xCD DELUXE VERSION during the itinerant Sheff's travels around the United States and tenure in New York City, (VINYL NON-RETURNABLE) recorded in Austin with longtime Okkervil River co-producer Brian Beattie, and mixed with Jim CD BOX LOT: 25 UNITS Eno of Spoon at his Public Hi-Fi studio, The Stage Names eschews outsider guests to focus on the LP BOX LOT: 25 UNITS core lineup of a backing band made tight and road-weary in rock clubs around the world. These 2xCD DELUXE VERSION BOX LOT: 18 UNITS songs give members of this usually shambolic troupe (keyboardist Jonathan Meiburg, drummer GENRE: INDIE POP Travis Nelsen, electric guitarist Brian Cassidy, bassist Patrick Pestorius, and coronet player Scott KEY MARKETS: LOS ANGELES, CHICAGO, NEW YORK, Brackett) the occasion to turn in bravura performances as Sheff’s distinctively heated vocals, never PHILADELPHIA, SAN FRANCISCO/OAKLAND/ more assured or in control, sail on top of them. The music soars, the lyrics cut, chaos is skirted, SAN JOSE, SEATTLE/TACOMA, DALLAS/FT. WORTH, mystery is courted, and it all looks easy. This is the sound of a band at the height of their powers, AUSTIN, NORFOLK/PORTSMOUTH, NEWPORT effortlessly making good on their earlier promise long after the point where they remember or care that they even made that promise in the first place. CD UPC: 656605211022 1. Jagjaguwar’s highest selling and hardest working band, Okkervil River played over 200 dates in 6 56605 21102 2 2005/2006 with the Decemberists, Rilo Kiley, Azure Ray, Two Gallants, John Vanderslice, Shearwater, and Man Man, among others, not to mention being hand-picked by Lou Reed to open for him at the LP UPC: 656605211015 grand opening of the Highline Ballroom this April. A seven-week North American tour begins the third week of August. 2. A heavy marketing and advertising lay out will create an ever-present atmosphere for this album. 6 56605 21101 5 3. Last year’s Black Sheep Boy and Black Sheep Boy Appendix have scanned 30,000 copies. 2xCD DELUXE VERSION UPC: 656605211121 4. A limited edition (only 5000 copies) 2xCD deluxe version of The Stage Names with solo demos of each of the songs from the proper album is available. 5. Press by Sacksco and radio by AAM. 6 56605 21112 1 EXCLUSIVELY DISTRIBUTED BY SC DISTRIBUTION PHONE: (812) 335-1572 / FAX: (812) 323-8494 1499 WEST SECOND STREET US DOMESTIC SALES CONTACT JACQUI REFICE JACQUI SCDISTRIBUTION.COM BLOOMINGTON, IN 47403 < @ > WWW.JAGJAGUWAR.COM INTERNATIONAL SALES CONTACT ALEX MANN <[email protected]>.