The Decemberists - The King is Dead
Review
by Lisa Dib
After a surprisingly rancorous rock effort with 2009’s semi-concept
album "Hazards of Love", Portland’s The Decemberists return with "The
King is Dead"; turning one-eighty degrees to release a soft-edged
country album. And, oh, it really is lovely.
Opener Don’t Carry It All sets
the tone, letting you know that Colin Meloy and Co. have hit a rustic
vein. Wailing harmonica fills your senses; Meloy’s voice in perfect
maudlin fashion. Country diamond Gillian Welch lends her backing vocals
to this and a number of tracks on the record and Chris Funk
drives a gorgeous pedal steel here to its greater limits. Feelin’ country yet? Yee-haw, etcetera.
Calamity Song
is fairy standard Decemberists fare, comparatively; that is to say,
beautiful. Sensing a bias? "The King is Dead", you realise
retrospectively, is rife with Meloy’s loquacious penchant for inclusive
and homey lyricism. Usually speaking from the underdog’s POV,
you could easily believe the entire King album was the homespun story
of one backwoods family, growing crops, falling in love at the barn
dance and losing sons and cousins to the perpetual American war
machine. The girls wear gingham, the boys chew tobacco
astride a steed, pies rest on the windowsill and cool, still nights are
spent singing to the wheat fields in hopeful unison.
Rise To Me
: exemplary vocals from Meloy here. A swaying, pedal-steeled country
tune, the likes of which I doubt the Soggy Bottom Boys themselves would
be wary of competing with. Rox in the Box
is where our Decemberists friends get a little darker, a tad denser;
hello, bouzouki! Hello, accordion! The whole song is wrapped in this
sort of vaguely Mariner’s Revenge Song-type shade. Oddly, this murk leads rather nicely into January Hymn; a yards softer, acoustic-based, er, hymn of sorts.
A
sadness overtakes the song; maybe it’s Jenny Conlee on the organ, or
maybe it’s the way Meloy’s intricate, regretful vocalization renders
the line, “And maybe it will all come back to me.” Whatever the reason,
it’s sublime.
First single Down By The Water is a forceful
push back into darker country territory, made the band’s own. Again,
there is something just perfect about Meloy’s tone here; he seems to be
able, not only to deliver the ‘message’ of a song, but to somehow
inhabit it, delivering it to us from within. “Down by the water and
down by the old main drag” gets me every time.
All Arise!
pulls out all the country stops; banjo, fiddle, Welch on backing-
superb. Even the lyrics adhere to traditional country verse: “But you
keep on rolling/ Yes, you keep on rolling…” and “You spit thick and
cross your heart.”
June Hymn, although lyrically pleasant
(“Pegging clothing on the line/ Training jasmine how to vine”) is
somewhat lacklustre and acts more as a palette-cleanser before the
energy of This Is Why We Fight bursts forth. Fight has the denser drums
and fuller, sharper guitar sounds seen less on this album than
Decemberists records previous, but maintains its country root.
Dear
Avery rounds off the album: a strong ten tracks worth of heart, soul
and finesse. Dear Avery seems to be a lovelorn ode to a husband at war.
The song, by my standards of Decemberists fare- being the epic fangirl
I am, squee- is a tad beige, but acts as a lovely ender to this
multi-faced, homespun and welcoming record. RATING: 3 out of 5
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