Synopsis

Okkervil River perform on a small, visibly artificial wooden ship as it drifts across a stylized sea. The band members play while the vessel gradually sinks, turning a conventional performance video into a bleak miniature disaster scene. As the ship disappears beneath the water, their raised hands remain visible above the surface, creating a stark final image. The deliberately theatrical construction gives the song's breakup imagery a fatalistic, almost storybook quality, with the simple stage design making the emotional collapse feel both intimate and strangely surreal.

Factoids & Trivia

• "It Ends With A Fall" appears on *Down The River Of Golden Dreams*, Okkervil River's second full-length album, released September 2, 2003.

• The video's flat wooden ship and artificial sea make the performance look like a handmade stage tableau rather than a realistic maritime scene. That contrast between visible construction and genuine emotional despair is central to its effect.

• A contemporary music-video promotion page described the clip as "impossibly sad," specifically noting the band sinking aboard the two-dimensional ship while their hands linger above the water.

• The song later became part of a musical exchange between Okkervil River's Will Sheff and The Wrens' Charles Bissell. Bissell recorded a cover for a 7-inch single that paired it with Sheff's version of The Wrens' "Ex-Girl Collection," released through Jagjaguwar in 2009.

• The video was already circulating online by August 2005, before a Jagjaguwar YouTube upload appeared in April 2006.