Blog: the monsters under the bed are not real

7. Okkervil River: The Stand-ins The Stand-Ins is slower and brighter than The Stage Names, albeit substantially more morbid. It takes up the sad, slow-motion suicides of the slightly-famous with such grace that they can hardly be cliché, and manages to sound considerably less depressing than the band's earlier albums while doing it. It kind of reminds me, actually, of Zadie Smith's novel, The Autograph Man , in which the characters waste their lives away but the book's quirky tone distracts from the melancholy. Like Smith's characters, Sheff's are self-absorbed, entitled, and always fragile [...]