After the errand, I brought back a few reject CDs to Lyle's Place (they can't all be winners, kids) and rewarded myself with five new ones. I got one protest folk, one celtic folk, one eighties metal, one outlaw country, and one rap.
I have pretty eclectic tastes, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a kick out of buying a bunch of disparate music at the same time. It is fun.
Disc 154 is...The Crane Wife
Artist: The DecemberistsYear of Release: 2006
What’s Up With The Cover?: I don't know, but I like the simplicity of it. I believe it is simply a couple of Little People, maybe dressed in clothes from around the turn of the century. Maybe the woman is supposed to be the Crane Wife, but she doesn't look the part.
How I Came To Know It: As I noted when I reviewed my other Decemberists album way back at Disc 47, I discovered this record through a mixed CD made by my friends Catherine and Ross. This song was a Catherine track "Sons and Daughters" which I loved, so I went and found the record with that song. This is that record.
How It Stacks Up: I only have two Decemberists albums, but I like them both. Of the two, "The Crane Wife" is the better record.
Rating: 4 stars.
As I've noted in prior reviews, The Decemberists are an indie band, but they have a lot of folk sensibilities that appeal to me. "The Crane Wife" has a very progressive sound to it as well, and it reminds me of early Jethro Tull in places. I tagged this as "progressive" as well, in the Jethro Tull style, since it includes long songs that are really amalgamations of three or four songs spun together. Also, the time signatures jump all over the place, but manage to hold a consistent sound.
On this listen, I spent considerable time trying to figure out if this is a concept album. It definitely has a cohesive feel to it, mostly wrapped around the ancient myth of (unsurprisingly) the Crane Wife, and maybe a few other tales that take place in the same marshy wetlands where she lives.
If you don't know, the Crane Wife legend is one with many variants through cultures around the world. Basically, it is the story of a simple man who discovers a woman in the wilds, falls in love and marries her. She is actually a crane who has transformed into a person to love him. Often she lives with him for many years, but once her true nature is discovered, she returns to her crane form, and leaves him forever.
I couldn't resist looking up some more details. Sometimes she leaves when her feather cloak is discovered (proving her identity) and other times she makes beatiful weaving out of her own feathers, but by doing so falls ill. This latter version is depicted in track 9 "The Crane Wife 1 & 2". This song also features an added wrinkle, where the man finds the crane wife wounded in the wild, and takes her in (presumably she is injured as a crane, and then transforms to get his help).
Anyway, it is a pretty cool legend in my books, and the Decemberists give it a very fresh update by adding in an Americana/Civil War period sort of feel to the stories, but that still maintains the basic themes so important for the continuation of myth.
Needless to say, this album fed my English Lit geekery very effectively.
The music itself is excellent. Lead singer Colin Meloy has a very distinctive voice which I have a hard time describing. Somehow on this record he takes that detached sound common to indie music, and use it to make himself more the storyteller than the protagonist in the songs. It is like having someone sing you a really cool bedtime story.
The best tracks on the record are at the very beginning with "The Crane Wife 3" and at the end with the final three tracks, "Summersong", "The Crane Wife 1 & 2" and "Sons & Daughters", with a slight letdown in the middle in terms of quality. Still good, but not great, and so I must give this album only 4 stars, but a solid 4 nonetheless.
"Sons & Daughters" was the song that hooked me on the Decemberists (well played, Catherine), and is still great fun after many many listens. This listen I had an epiphany, and decided that the song is about the sons and daughters of the Crane Wife and the man she marries. It starts off:
"When we arrive, sons and daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls of aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon."
It makes sense to me that the children of a Crane Wife would return one day to live at the shore of a lake, on house boats or barges. Made of aluminium because (as Sheila pointed out) - it is a lightweight material if you are building on the water. Just because you are the son or daughter of a spirit creature doesn't mean you can't be practical.
Many of the middle tracks tell tales of war or crime that happen on the lake edge, with much murder and foul play on songs like "Yankee Bayonet", "The Perfect Crime" and "Shankill Butchers".
So it is lovely that after all the death inflicted by people, and the star-crossed love of the crane wife and her man, we can end with sons & daughters returning to the place to make it a home again. The final lines of the record are a fade out of:
"Hear all the bombs, they fade away" - repeated over and over. An anthem that reminds us that despite a lot of bad history, good times are gonna come again soon.
It sticks with you, and so does this record - a solid entry in the CD Odyssey.
Best tracks: The Crane Wife 3, O Valencia, Summersong, The Crane Wife 1 & 2, Sons & Daughters
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