A double album is a dangerous proposition for any band. Even for a band like Okkervil River who initially came to attention through an ambitious concept album (the occasionally brilliant but very uneven "Black Sheep Boy"), it's a big ask to come up with twenty plus songs in the time that bands normally struggle to come up with one album's worth, and have all of them come out consistent enough to duck the almost inevitable calls that "this would have been better as a single album".

Okkervil River have dealt with this by releasing the two albums in this double set a year or so apart, giving listeners a bit of time to digest and come to terms with the first part before exploring the second part (and the cynical might also infer that it's a way of getting fans to pay double what they otherwise would have if the album was released all in one package). The first album in this set, "The Stage Names" was brilliant in parts but was dragged down by a couple of songs that were clearly substandard compared to the brilliant A Girl In Port and John Allyn Smith Sails. Thankfully, while its follow-up "The Stand-Ins" never quite manages to hit the highs of its predecessor, it is a hell of a lot more consistent and each of the songs here is solid enough to justify being included on the album.

When I say "songs", I don't mean "tracks", because of the eleven tracks here, three of them are just instrumental interlude pieces that are gone in under a minute. This means that there are only eight actual songs on "The Stand-Ins" which on some levels is a bit of a disappointment, but the quality and length of what is presented makes up for this, as does the band's ability to shift between different musical styles on each song to keep the whole thing from getting stale.

For instance, the first proper song on the album, Lost Coastlines, starts out with a gently plucked guitar, at first suggesting that the song is going to be a rustic folk piece, before a bouncing bass line jumps into the song, converting the whole thing to a lively pop rock song. Singer Songwriter starts out similarly, with a gently strummed acoustic guitar, but rather than taking the pop rock route, a steel guitar, flat sounding percussion, and Will Sheff's rather distinctive stream-of-consciousness lyrics take the song down a distinctly Nashville pathway.

Perhaps my favourite piece here though is Blue Tulip, a much grander and slower piece than the rest of the album, that nails the whole classic rock sound perfectly, complete with the organ-and-guitar solo, and squalling guitar feedback in the extended outro. You can almost visualise the track being played by some washed up 70s rocker in bad sunglasses and with long hair.

As mentioned before though, the best part of the album is its consistency, because all of these songs are good in their own way. I've always felt that if Okkervil River could focus their songwriting efforts into an album worth of solid material, they would be a force to be reckoned with, and this album proves I was right. Definitely one of the more intelligent, literate, and all-around well made albums that I've heard so far this year.