Good Weather For Airstrikes

With the new Decemberists album, The Crane Wife, finally gracing the shelves of record stores nationwide yesterday (almost two months after the leak first hit the internet), I can at last share with you some of the excellence that comprises one of the year’s absolute best releases. Any concerns aroused by the album’s “major label debut” status can be put to rest, as Capitol’s influence can be heard only in the album’s increased production values rather than in any impediment of the band’s established undeniably-indie sound, which was surely the fear of the band’s loyal fanbase. You’ve already heard “Summersong” here before, thanks to Capitol savvily granting Pitchfork the exclusive mp3 last month, which is the album’s most immediate and accessible (i.e. the “most maintream”) track, but even that retains the distinct Meloy feel. Chris Walla, now working with the relative freedom of a major label budget for the second time, does another brilliant job behind the boards here, expanding the already epic scale of the music and taking the band’s sound to new heights.

Electric guitar is introduced to the band’s already vast arsenal of instruments, but this isn’t to say Colin Meloy: Lit-Rock King has become Colin Meloy: Guitar Hero. Rather, it’s used more as a tool of emphasis in a complimentary role, as can be seen on album highlights “The Crane Wife 3″ and “Sons & Daughters”, which bookend the album flawlessly. The electric guitar does take center stage on the album’s biggest wtf moment, the hard-rocking “When The War Came”, which opens with a barrage of electric power chords that wouldn’t be out of place on a hardcore album. Soon enough, Meloy’s distinct vocals come in and things click, and the track ends up working well (really well in fact), but it’s a sound never before heard from the Decemberists. New ground is also broken on “The Perfect Crime 2″ (don’t hold your breath for a “Perfect Crime 1″ though, as you won’t find it on this album), which sees the band at their danciest with a pulsing drumbeat and a jumpy, dancey bassline.

MP3: “When The War Came” - The Decemberists

Elsewhere, the rest of the album sees the band perfecting and expanding the sound found on their three previous releases. Probable first single, “O, Valencia” is one of Meloy’s best works to date, a classic feuding families/forbidden love story with a soaring chorus and addictive refrain. I feel badly sharing more than three cuts off the album, so you’ll have to settle for an excellent-quality solo performance of the song from Colin’s August 2005 solo performance at The Beachcomber. The song’s structure remains identical on the album, though he obviously doesn’t forget the lyrics in the final version and the album sees the introduction of a full band to the track, but don’t worry, it remains every bit as catchy.

MP3: “O Valencia” (Live @ The Beachcomber) - Colin Meloy

The lit-rockers’ irrepressible penchant for the epic manifests itself in epic long-runner “The Island”, one of the two primary song cycles around which the album is structured along with the three-part “Crane Wife” series. The latter is broken up between two songs (”The Crane Wife 1 & 2″ and album-opener “The Crane Wife 3″), while the former remains intact as one 12+ minute masterwork. “The Island”s three parts (”Come and See”, “The Landlord’s Wife”, “You’ll Not Feel The Drowning”) darts all over the map in terms of melody, pace and intensity, climaxing in a ridiculous “La-ahhhhh” falsetto the likes of which have never been heard from Meloy. The other featured song cycle is the “Crane Wife” series, the final installment of which serves to open the album perfectly. “The Crane Wife 3” is centered on a repeating descending guitar riff, accented by an emotive electric guitar stroke and completed by Meloy’s tender “hang my head, hang my head low” chorus. “The Crane Wife 1 & 2″ would be much better off split into two parts, as part one proves to be significantly better than part two, what with its driving rhythm section and the uplifting crescendo that leads into another soaring chorus, complete with an ascending xylophone progression and everything. The xylophone love continues at the end of part one, stealing the spotlight for a moment (along with an equally-catchy keys progression) before the instrumentation dies out and gives way to part two. They kind of flow into each other, but the reality is that these really should have been broken up into two separate parts, the first of only a few gripes about the album.

MP3: “The Crane Wife 3″ - The Decemberists ((highly recommended))

The only other instances in which the album stumbles are on “Yankee Bayonet” and “Shankhill Butchers”, which are by no means bad songs, but neither maintains the extremely high standard set throughout the rest of the album. “Yankee Bayonet” serves as a polite “thanks for everything” to Kill Rock Stars, as its a duet with former labelmate Laura Veirs (whose profile will be raised significantly if this album’s well received by the general public), and while the unconventional beauty of Veir’s voice nicely compliments that of Meloy, the track dwells in mediocrity and fails to be anything more than average. “Shankhill Butchers”, by far the album’s worst track, is a tedious acoustic affair that fails to recapture the emotive magic that previous Decemberists classics of the same ilk “Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect”, “On The Bus Mall” and even “Angels & Angles” did. Fortunately, the album perserveres and ends on a high note, with repeated plays proving album closer “Sons & Daughters” to be the best track. The song opens with gentle acoustic strumming and one of the catchiest vocal structures Meloy’s ever composed (also, dude gets props for rhyming “dirigible” with “untraceable”) and builds throughout, adding more instruments as it progresses and snowballing to an epic finish in which the group’s voices unite to carry the album to a perfect close. All in all, the Decemberists have turned in an extremely impressive major label debut, and while it immediately stacks up well next to their previous releases (so much so that Everett’s currently got it tabbed as his front-runner for album of the year), only time will tell if it can maintain the replayability and enjoyability of Castaways & Cutouts and last year’s career highlight (in my opinion) Picaresque.

MP3: “Sons & Daughters” - The Decemberists ((highly recommended))

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Album Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.