The Decemberists | ||
| Allmusic Biography : Led by Montana native Colin Meloy, the Decemberists craft theatrical, hyper-literate pop songs that draw heavily from late-60s British folk acts like Fairport Convention and Pentangle and the early-80s college rock grandeur of the Waterboys and R.E.M. The bands initial lineup also included drummer Ezra Holbrook, bassist Nate Query, keyboardist/accordionist Jenny Conlee, and multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk. Frontman Meloy had previously devoted some time to an alternative country group before breaking off to pursue his craft as a singer/songwriter in the city of Portland, a move that eventually led to the Decemberists formation. Drawing influence from his degree in creative writing, he began fashioning a hybrid of literate lyrics and wide-ranging pop music, touching upon everything from Sandy Denny to Morrissey in the process. Before Hush Records released the bands debut album in 2002, the Decemberists baited their initial fans with a five-track EP. Their full-length debut, Castaways and Cutouts, was re-released that same year on the Kill Rock Stars label, and the band began to accumulate a serious fan base. After adding organist and keyboardist Rachel Blumberg to the group, in 2003 the Decemberists released Her Majesty, another fine collection of theatrical indie pop with pastoral sensibilities that further cemented their growing reputation. One year later, a five-part epic EP entitled The Tain -- based on the eighth century Irish poem of the same name -- appeared, followed by the full-length Picaresque in 2005. The group, which at this point consisted of Meloy, Conlee, Query, Funk, and drummer John Moen, made the move to the major leagues by signing with Capitol Records in advance of 2006s The Crane Wife, which managed to hit number 35 on the Billboard 200. The album also grabbed the attention of comedian/satirist Stephen Colbert, who challenged Funk to a guitar solo competition during a live taping of his show The Colbert Report. For their next project, the Decemberists tackled one of Meloys most ambitious ideas to date: an honest to God rock opera. The Hazards of Love appeared in 2009, featuring a fantasy-filled story line as well as cameos from My Morning Jackets Jim James, Lavender Diamonds Becky Stark, and My Brightest Diamonds Shara Worden. In January 2011, the band unexpectedly topped the charts with The King Is Dead, a concise and rustic country-pop collection that featured guest appearances by Peter Buck and Gillian Welch, and followed it up later that year with the outtakes EP Long Live the King. With touring completed for The King Is Dead, the band went on hiatus, but still released the double live album We All Raise Our Voices to the Air in 2012. Coming off their hiatus, the Decemberists returned with several live dates in 2014, and began work on their seventh studio album. On January 20, 2015, the album, titled What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, was released, and the group celebrated the event with a three-month tour covering the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. In September of that year, the band issued an EP, Florasongs, that featured material from the What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World sessions. The group then collaborated with U.K. singer/songwriter Olivia Chaney, forming the band Offa Rex for the 2017 album The Queen of Hearts. The following year, they regrouped as Decemberists for their eighth studio album, 2018s Ill Be Your Girl, bringing producer John Congleton aboard for a more synth-led record. Ill Be Your Girl debuted at number nine on Billboards Top 200 upon its March release and was followed that December by Traveling On, an EP of outtakes from its recording sessions. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 12 Title: 5 Songs Released: 2001 Tracks: 5 Duration: 03:29 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Oceanside (03:29) 2 Shiny (?) 3 My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist (?) 4 Angel, Wont You Call Me? (?) 5 I Dont Mind (?) |
 | Album: 2 of 12 Title: Castaways and Cutouts Released: 2002-05-21 Tracks: 10 Duration: 50:23 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Leslie Anne Levine (04:14) 2 Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect (04:31) 3 July, July! (02:55) 4 A Cautionary Song (03:10) 5 Odalisque (05:22) 6 Cocoon (06:50) 7 Grace Cathedral Hill (04:30) 8 The Legionnaire’s Lament (04:46) 9 Clementine (04:09) 10 California One / Youth and Beauty Brigade (09:50) |
| Castaways and Cutouts : Allmusic album Review : Colin Meloys dynamic vocals lead the way on Castaways and Cutouts, the impressive 2003 effort by Portland, OR, quintet the Decemberists. Throughout the disc, Meloys songs tell tales of lifes castaways, including Spanish gypsies and Turkish prostitutes, painting glorious pictures with supposedly suspicious characters. After opening the album with two subdued tracks, "July, July!" is a lively anthem, setting a gloriously quirky pace for the rest of the disc. "A Cautionary Song" centers around Jenny Conlees accordion, as acoustic guitar swirls around Meloys narrative. "Odalisque" is quite possibly the highlight of the album, carrying the listener through peaks and valleys led by Conlees juiced-up organ and Meloys grittiest vocals of the disc. "Cocoon" calms the mood back down, with gentle piano and guitar serving as the songs backbone. On "The Legionnaires Lament," the bands effortless folk is at its best, with choppy guitars and enchanting organ swirling behind Meloys relentlessly thrilling storytelling. Yet again, the disc continues a rise-and-fall approach as the restrained and engaging "Clementine" is next, followed by the beautiful "California One," which features some jaw-dropping upright bass by Nate Query. That song makes a seamless transition into the closer, "Youth and Beauty Brigade," a carefully crafted epic full of witticisms and reserved style. Meloys vocals are their most engaging by now, and while the last track might not be the standout song of the disc, its perfectly positioned on the disc for maximum effect. The songs rising intensity and lyrical imagery add up for a stunning finish, leaving the listener clamoring for more, as all great albums do. Chris Funk adds guitar and theremin, and drummer Ezra Holbrook rounds out the five-piece band. Originally released in 2002 on Hush Records, Kill Rock Stars Records released Castaways and Cutouts in May 2003. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 12 Title: Her Majesty the Decemberists Released: 2003-09-09 Tracks: 11 Duration: 48:30 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Shanty for the Arethusa (05:37) 2 Billy Liar (04:08) 3 Los Angeles, I’m Yours (04:17) 4 The Gymnast, High Above the Ground (07:13) 5 The Bachelor and the Bride (04:12) 6 Song for Myla Goldberg (03:33) 7 The Soldiering Life (03:48) 8 Red Right Ankle (03:29) 9 The Chimbley Sweep (02:53) 10 I Was Meant for the Stage (07:02) 11 As I Rise (02:14) |
 | Album: 4 of 12 Title: The Tain Released: 2004-02-24 Tracks: 1 Duration: 18:35 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 The Tain (18:35) |
 | Album: 5 of 12 Title: The Tain / 5 Songs Released: 2004-03-02 Tracks: 6 Duration: 22:04 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 The Tain (18:35) 2 Oceanside (03:29) 3 Shiny (?) 4 My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist (?) 5 Angel, Wont You Call Me? (?) 6 I Dont Mind (?) |
 | Album: 6 of 12 Title: Picaresque Released: 2005-03-21 Tracks: 16 Duration: 1:12:32 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 The Infanta (05:07) 2 We Both Go Down Together (03:04) 3 Eli, the Barrow Boy (03:11) 4 The Sporting Life (04:38) 5 The Bagman’s Gambit (07:02) 6 From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea) (03:42) 7 16 Military Wives (04:52) 8 The Engine Driver (04:15) 1 On the Bus Mall (06:04) 2 The Mariner’s Revenge Song (08:45) 3 Of Angels and Angles (02:27) 4 The Bandit Queen (with "dialogue" and "tap dancing") (04:19) 5 Bridges and Balloons (03:19) 6 Constantinople (03:34) 7 The Kingdom of Spain (version Prescott) (03:43) 8 The Bandit Queen (version Prescott) (04:26) |
| Picaresque : Allmusic album Review : "The Infanta," the thunderous opening track on the Decemberists fluid and predictably studious Picaresque, rolls in like a ghost ship at 40 knots in a hail of cannon fire with a mad English professor at the wheel. Colin Meloy and his esteemed West Coast colleagues have no qualms about beginning their third full-length record with a processional about a child monarch, and its a testimony to their talents as orators and interpreters of both the absurd and the mundane that they continue to assimilate more fans than they alienate. While Picaresque follows its predecessors -- the treacly Her Majesty -- predilection for seafaring and mythology, its boot-covered feet are more firmly planted in the present, resulting in the groups most accessible -- and decidedly upbeat -- product to date. The rollicking "16 Military Wives," the aforementioned "Infanta," and "The Sporting Live" (which comes dangerously close to Belle & Sebastians "Stars of Track and Field") help balance the spooky atmospherics of more reserved cuts like "From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)" and "Eli, the Barrow Boy." The Decemberists have always excelled at midtempo British folk-inspired dream pop, and Picaresque is no exception, as the brooding "We Both Go Down Together," which sounds like a mist-drenched Pacific Northwest rendering of R.E.M.s "Losing My Religion," and the wistful "Engine Driver" rank among the groups finest offerings. The album concludes with the diabolical "Mariners Revenge Song," a Tin Pan Alley dirge/operetta reminiscent of Kurt Weills "The Black Freighter," and the brief but intoxicating "Of Angels and Angles," a solo Meloy ballad celebrating the holy trinity of nautical lore: love, drowning, and death. | ||
 | Album: 7 of 12 Title: The Crane Wife Released: 2006-10-03 Tracks: 10 Duration: 1:00:14 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 The Crane Wife 3 (04:18) 2 The Island: Come and See / The Landlord’s Daughter / You’ll Not Feel the Drowning (12:26) 3 Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) (04:18) 4 O Valencia! (03:47) 5 The Perfect Crime #2 (05:33) 6 When the War Came (05:06) 7 Shankill Butchers (04:39) 8 Summersong (03:31) 9 The Crane Wife 1 & 2 (11:19) 10 Sons & Daughters (05:13) |
| The Crane Wife : Allmusic album Review : Colin Meloy and his brave Decemberists made the unlikely jump to a major label after 2005s excellent Picaresque, a move that surprised both longtime fans and detractors of the band. While it is difficult to imagine the suits at Capitol seeing dollar signs in the eyes of an accordion- and bouzouki-wielding, British folk-inspired collective from Portland, OR, that dresses in period Civil War outfits and has been known to cover Morrissey, its hard to argue with what the Decemberists have wrought from their bounty. The Crane Wife is loosely based on a Japanese folk tale that concerns a crane, an arrow, a beautiful woman, and a whole lot of clandestine weaving. The records spirited opener and namesake picks off almost exactly where Picaresque left off, building slowly off a simple folk melody before exploding into some serious Who power chords. This is the first indication that the band itself was ready to take the loosely ornate, reverb-heavy Decemberists sound to a new sonic level, or rather that producers Tucker Martine and Chris Walla were. On first listen, the tight, dry, and compressed production style sounds more like Queens of the Stone Age than Fairport Convention, but as The Crane Wife develops over its 60-plus minutes, a bigger picture appears. Meloy, who along with Destroyers Dan Bejar has mastered the art of the North American English accent, has given himself over to early-70s progressive rock with gleeful abandon, and while many of the tracks pale in comparison to those on Picaresque, the ones that succeed do so in the grandest of fashions. Fans of the groups Tain EP will find themselves drawn to "Island: Come and See/The Landlords Daughter/Youll Not Feel the Drowning" and "The Crane Wife, Pts. 1 & 2," both of which are well over ten minutes long and feature some truly inspired moments that echo everyone from the Waterboys and R.E.M. to Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, while those who embrace the bands poppier side will flock around the winsome "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)," which relies heavily on the breathy delivery of Seattle singer/songwriter and part-time Decemberist Laura Veirs. Some cuts, like the English murder ballad "Shankill Butchers" and "Summersong" (the latter eerily reminiscent of Edie Brickells "What I Am"), sound like outtakes from previous records, but by the time the listener arrives at the Donovan-esque (in a good way) closer, "Sons & Daughters," the less tasty bits of The Crane Wife seem a wee bit sweeter. | ||
 | Album: 8 of 12 Title: The Hazards of Love Released: 2009-03-16 Tracks: 17 Duration: 58:46 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Prelude (03:04) 2 The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone) (04:18) 3 A Bower Scene (02:08) 4 Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga) (04:06) 5 The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All) (04:25) 6 The Queen’s Approach (00:29) 7 Isn’t It a Lovely Night? (03:38) 8 The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid (06:26) 9 An Interlude (01:40) 1 The Rake’s Song (03:15) 2 The Abduction of Margaret (02:06) 3 The Queen’s Rebuke / The Crossing (03:56) 4 Annan Water (05:11) 5 Margaret in Captivity (03:07) 6 The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!) (03:21) 7 The Wanting Comes in Waves (reprise) (01:30) 8 The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned) (05:57) |
| The Hazards of Love : Allmusic album Review : King Decemberist Colin Meloys love for the heydays of British folk-rock has always served as the foundation on which he builds his crafty, idiosyncratic chamber pop, but on Hazards of Love hes taken that bedrock and built his own version of Stonehenge. A 17-song suite (think one continuous song with track IDs peppered throughout for sanitys sake) about a girl named Margaret, shapeshifters, forest queens, and fairytale treachery, Hazards of Love is ambitious, pretentious, obtuse, often impenetrable, and altogether pretty great. Harking back to the late-60s/early-70s offerings from bands like Pentangle, Horslips, ELP, Steeleye Span, and the Incredible String Band, it makes no apologies for its nerdy, prog rock musicality, and convoluted narrative. Meloy, who often cites Shirley Collins, Nic Jones, and Anne Briggs as influences -- Hazards is named after a Briggs EP which featured no such song -- must have had a vast hard rock/power metal collection to draw from as well, as one can glean melodic cues and structures from Iron Maiden and Rush as easily as they can Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull. On a record with no obvious single (the first instance of the title track comes the closest), its the album as a whole that needs to engage, and for the most part, the Decemberists have succeeded. The inclusion of guest vocalists Becky Stark (Lavender Diamond) and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), who bring some Little Queen-era Heart to the table, as well as bit parts from Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Rebecca Gates (Spinanes), and Robyn Hitchcock help keep the focus off Meloys affected vocals, but its the music that drives this beast into the forest. Producer Tucker Martine has beefed up the bands sound even more than he did with Christopher Walla on 2006s Crane Wife, channeling more reverb into the acoustics and a whole lot more brimstone into the electrics, resulting in what is easily the bands best sounding record to date. Hazards of Love wont convert anybody who already wrote the band off as overly precious bookworms with a Morrissey/Victorian ghost story fetish, but fans who have dutifully followed the Decemberists since their 2002 debut get to take home bragging rights this time around. | ||
 | Album: 9 of 12 Title: The King Is Dead Released: 2011-01-14 Tracks: 10 Duration: 40:40 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Don’t Carry It All (04:17) 2 Calamity Song (03:49) 3 Rise to Me (04:59) 4 Rox in the Box (03:09) 5 January Hymn (03:13) 6 Down by the Water (03:41) 7 All Arise! (03:09) 8 June Hymn (03:57) 9 This Is Why We Fight (05:30) 10 Dear Avery (04:51) |
| The King Is Dead : Allmusic album Review : The Decemberists sixth, full-length studio outing finds the Portland, OR-based indie rock collective exploring a region that has thus far eluded them. Raised on a steady diet of Morrissey, Robyn Hitchcock, Shirley Collins, and Fairport Convention, The King Is Dead represents frontman Colin Meloys first foray into the musical traditions of his homeland, or more specifically, it proves that he really, really likes R.E.M. “Calamity Song,” which is one of three tracks to feature guitar work from Peter Buck, threatens to break into “Pretty Persuasion” or "So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)" at any moment, and first single “Down by the Water” flirts with “The One I Love” hard enough to take it on a long weekend, though Meloy has stated that the track “started out as more of a paean to R.E.M. than I think any of us really wanted it to.” David Rawlings and Gillian Welch also join the party on a number of tracks, lending their instantly recognizable voices to two of the album’s finest moments, the Wildflowers-era, Tom Petty-inspired “Don’t Carry It All” and the lovely, Paul Simon-esque “June Hymn” -- Meloy and Welch, the former a Montana-born Anglophile and the latter a California girl with a fetish for dust bowl Appalachia -- harmonize nicely, canceling out each other’s vocal affectations. It’s by far the clearest and most commercial collection of tunes the band has amassed to date, but it’s also the least interesting. It may sound like a cross between Camper Van Beethovens Key Lime Pie and R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, but none of the tracks have the gravitas or potential staying power of a song like “Sweethearts” (CVP) or “Find the River” (R.E.M.). That said, it’s a refreshing change from the usual compilation of bibliophile, sea shanty/murder ballad, and while the Led Zeppelin III-style rural overhauling may isolate fans who prefer the serpentine, progressive art rock of albums like The Crane Wife and Hazards of Love, it opens up a whole new continent for the band to explore. | ||
 | Album: 10 of 12 Title: We All Raise Our Voices to the Air (Live Songs 04.11-08.11) Released: 2012-03-12 Tracks: 20 Duration: 2:00:29 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 The Infanta (05:46) 2 Calamity Song (03:51) 3 Rise to Me (04:48) 4 The Soldiering Life (05:04) 5 We Both Go Down Together (04:30) 6 The Bagman’s Gambit (08:27) 7 Down by the Water (03:48) 8 Leslie Ann Levine (04:07) 9 The Rake’s Song (04:44) 10 The Crane Wife 1, 2, and 3 (16:08) 1 Oceanside (03:26) 2 Billy Liar (06:41) 3 Grace Cathedral Hill (04:24) 4 All Arise! (04:22) 5 Rox in the Box (03:06) 6 June Hymn (04:29) 7 Dracula’s Daughter > O Valencia! (05:26) 8 This Is Why We Fight (04:46) 9 The Mariner’s Revenge Song (12:14) 10 I Was Meant for the Stage (10:12) |
 | Album: 11 of 12 Title: What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World Released: 2015-01-19 Tracks: 14 Duration: 53:04 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 The Singer Addresses His Audience (04:42) 2 Cavalry Captain (03:17) 3 Philomena (03:04) 4 Make You Better (05:07) 5 Lake Song (05:52) 6 Till the Water’s All Long Gone (05:01) 7 The Wrong Year (03:53) 8 Carolina Low (03:24) 9 Better Not Wake the Baby (01:44) 10 Anti‐Summersong (02:12) 11 Easy Come, Easy Go (02:22) 12 Mistral (03:54) 13 12/17/12 (03:03) 14 A Beginning Song (05:22) |
| What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World : Allmusic album Review : The Decemberists belatedly embraced their indie pop sensibilities (or at very least their fondness for R.E.M.) on 2011s The King Is Dead, and were rewarded with a number one chart placing and the groups greatest commercial success to date, leading some to wonder if Colin Meloy and his bandmates were going to go for more hooks or return to the more ornate sound of their earlier work now that they had a large audience waiting for the follow-up. As it turns out, 2014s What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World finds the Decemberists managing to have it both ways; if anything, many of these songs are brighter and hookier than those on The King Is Dead, but if this is pop, its pop thats keenly intelligent, melodically adventurous, obsessively literate, and perfectly willing to explore sadness and disappointment rather than just the upbeat moods that are expected to accompany catchy melodies. The melodies on "Lake Song" and "Till the Water Is All Long Gone" may be more streamlined than youd hear on Picaresque or The Crane Wife, but the arrangements are richly detailed, playing on the dynamics of Chris Funks guitars, Jenny Conlees keyboards and accordions, and John Moens percussion, and the group takes much pleasure in the dour beauty of its melodies. The band also embraces its upbeat side on this album with numbers like "The Wrong Year" and "Philomena" (the latter pondering teenage lust as only the Decemberists can), and the opening track, "The Singer Addresses His Audience," is a witty but cutting meditation on the notion of fame, its impact on the culture, and where the Decemberists fit into the puzzle in the wake of hit records and appearances on Parks & Recreation. Theres still more than enough folk in the Decemberists approach to make them stand apart from their peers on the upper reaches of the pop charts, and the intuitive smarts of their stylistic vision are still front and center, but What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is an album where the creative sprawl is more a matter of how this divergent selection of melodies and moods interacts, rather than how many elements can be folded into one song; this is very clearly the Decemberists, but with a new kind of focus in their songs and arrangements that makes it clear this albums sound is a result of creative evolution, not an offering to their newer, larger audience, and its a sweet and sour wonder that rewards repeated listening. | ||
 | Album: 12 of 12 Title: I’ll Be Your Girl Released: 2018-03-16 Tracks: 11 Duration: 43:06 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Once in My Life (05:09) 2 Cutting Stone (03:20) 3 Severed (04:03) 4 Starwatcher (02:39) 5 Tripping Along (03:35) 6 Your Ghost (02:40) 7 Everything Is Awful (03:22) 8 Sucker’s Prayer (03:28) 9 We All Die Young (04:01) 10 Rusalka, Rusalka / Wild Rushes (08:15) 11 I’ll Be Your Girl (02:34) |
| I’ll Be Your Girl : Allmusic album Review : The shorthand description of Ill Be Your Girl, the Decemberists eighth album, is that its the record where the band decide to ditch the past and engage with the modern world, layering their folk-rock with synthesizers and other contemporary accouterments. The intentional irony is, that this modern sound -- shepherded by producer John Congleton, best-known for helming acclaimed albums by St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, and Future Islands -- is predicated on the New Wave of the 70s and 80s, a sound that would seem like a throwback for nearly any other group, but in the hands of the Decemberists, such swaths of synths provide a vibrant, colorful jolt. Congleton doesnt merely expand the bands palette, he acts as an effective editor for Colin Meloy, keeping the proceedings swift and clean. With most of the songs clocking in well under five minutes -- the opening "Once in My Life" and near-closing "Rusalka, Rusalka Wild Rushes," which stretches out over eight minutes, are the exceptions that put the rest of the record into perspective -- Ill Be Your Girl plays almost like a series of short stories, a feeling that is accentuated by how each cut feels like its own entity, yet the 11 songs form a tapestry. "Once in My Life" kicks off the record with washes of melancholy, "Severed" pulses to a rhythm straight out of Gary Numan, "Starwatcher" is a throwback to classic Decemberists ballads, "Your Ghost" gallops to a gothic beat, and "We All Die Young" is a glam stomp through and through. While Meloys lyrics are sharply honed and evocative, its this cavalcade of sounds that not only makes Ill Be Your Girl compelling, but distinctive among Decemberists albums. | ||