On their debut album, Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See, Okkervil River invoked Otis Redding's "I’ve Got Dreams to Remember" in a late-album sweep of drama. Here they take the closer, "John Allyn Smith Sails," and spin languidly into verses from "Sloop John B," with tattered, ragged horns invoking Neutral Milk Hotel. Singer Will Sheff re-asserts his primacy as the best mid-range, lyric-wobbling howler as he pleads, "I feel so broke up, I wanna go home." But you don't have to wait until the ninth track to get the point: Okkervil River has grown yet again, weaving mandolin twang with pump organ wheeze as they name-check the Byrds, "99 Luftbaloons," and Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," all in the first two minutes of "Plus Ones," and then embracing sad-sack heartbreak amidst pedal steel on "A Girl in Port," a mere four tracks after the distortion-laden guitar riffage of "Unless It's Kicks." Hyper-literate, musically accomplished, and keenly aware of dramatic sweep, Okkervil River continues fulfilling the promise inherent not only in each of their prior albums but also in the enthused throes of passion marking Okkervil's colleagues, Arcade Fire and Decemberists and Bright Eyes. A brilliant work, The Stage Names. --Andrew Bartlett

Last summer, not long after Ra Ra Riot released a promising EP, their drummer, John Ryan Pike, drowned in the ocean after a show in Massachusetts. His death weighs heavily on their excellent full-length debut, much of which he co-wrote. Taking its name from a bar close to Pike's home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, The Rhumb Line abounds with death and water imagery, vividly evoking loss in a seaside town. But if the music is funereal, it's also triumphant: Ra Ra Riot combine Arcade Fire's orchestral reveries with Vampire Weekend's pop sensibility for an album that's both effervescent and heartbreaking. ''Ghost Under Rocks'' starts as a mournful cello reverie, then boils over into a punchy industrial groove with stuttering drums. ''St. Peter's Day Festival'' banks on jumpy dub rhythms as Wesley Miles sings, ''If I go to Gloucester, I will wait there for you.'' ''Can You Tell'' folds organs and explosive strings into a Sixties girl-group beat. (Vampire Weekend keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij co-wrote an earlier version of the song.) Even the macabre ''Dying Is Fine'' sounds optimistic when Miles coos a few lines from an E.E. Cummings poem over a power-pop melody: ''Dying is fine/But maybe I wouldn't like death . . . even if death were good.'' Part of what makes The Rhumb Line so engaging is that it's ultimately life-affirming: It's not only a requiem for a lost friend, it's a tribute to the ones who stuck around through the worst times. As Miles sings on ''Oh, La,'' ''We've got a lot to learn from each other/We've got to stick together.'' By the album's end, he's declaring, ''I've discovered all I've got to do'' - a simple but compelling reason for moving on. --Rolling Stone