Down the River of Golden Dreams (2003)

Where last year's ''Don't Fall in Love With Everyone You See'' was a masterpiece of twangy, loping melancholia, the latest by Austin's Okkervil River is buoyed precariously on a cloud of hope. A great storyteller with rhyme schemes that would impress Eminem, frontman Will Sheff comes on like Conor Oberst with a tighter grip on the reins. FOR RAYMOND CARVER FANS On ''Yellow'' (not a Coldplay cover), a narrator pulls his brother from the wreckage of marriage and tries to convince him life doesn't suck. It's a scalpel worked deftly into the heart of a heart.