“I think there’s something revolutionary about a song like the Velvet Underground’s ‘Candy Says,’ especially being written in 1970. This is someone who’s absolutely a freak to the rest of the world, not worthy of being taken seriously by most people, but Lou Reed wrote a song that’s unbelievably touching and compassionate and humanizing and immortal. I’m very touched by that kind of approach in writing,” Will Sheff told me in an interview shortly before The Stage Names was released in 2007. Lou Reed had previously name checked Okkervil River as a personal favorite, even inviting them to open a NYC show in 2006, and his influence is all over The Stage Names. The saccharine “Savannah Smiles” borrows the threadbare elegance of the VU’s “Stephanie Says,” while “Unless It Kicks” is a distant cousin to “Street Hassle.” Sheff mentioned somewhere around the release of the record that he was influenced by William T. Vollman’s 2000 novel The Royal Family, and it’s easy to find connections between the pariahs, junkies, and prostitutes Vollman so adroitly and compassionately depicted throughout his novel and the flawed characters that inhabit The Stage Names like ghosts in the ether. Perhaps they didn’t have the constitution for success on the grand stage, but these characters ultimately embody a duality of rock clichés — they by turn burn out and fade away.