CD Odyssey Disc 1781: The Decemberists

I’m back to work after what was an action packed and social four-day weekend. I had not one, not two but three friends visiting from out of town, which was awesome, and all of them, plus a series of fun events with both visitors and locals resulting in me feeling much love and companionship.

The weekend wrapped up on Monday with attendance at the Remembrance Day ceremony. It felt appropriate to wrap up a weekend so filled with good times by setting aside some time for somber reflection on the sacrifices of our veterans to preserve our great way of life. Thanks to them, yesterday, today, and always.

OK, now a music review.

Disc 1781 is…What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World

Artist: The Decemberists

Year of Release: 2015

What’s up with the Cover? Some cheerful goddess figure strides about on a floating orb (the earth?) brandishing a wavy bladed sword and a short bow. I’m not familiar with this particular myth.

The rest of the cover is a bunch of repeating imagery in a colour scheme that looks like it was chosen by a Microsoft Office template. There appears to be a lot going on here but actually, not really.

Fortunately the album is way better than the cover.

How I Came To Know It: I was already a big fan of the Decemberists when this record came out, on the heels their masterpiece, “The King is Dead” (reviewed way back at Disc 490).

This was just me buying what came next. I may or may not have listened to it first, but probably not.

How It Stacks Up: I have nine Decemberists albums, which I believe is all of them. I guess I’m a fan. Of those nine, “What a Terrible World…” (not typing it) is one of the best. I would say it is in a statistical tie for second with “The Crane Wife” but since you don’t read this section to watch me equivocate, I’ll give “The Crane Wife” the slight edge, landing “What A Terrible World…” respectably at third.

Ratings: 4 stars

It may have taken four years for the Decemberists to follow their masterpiece, “the King is Dead” but the wait was worth it. “What a Terrible World…” is an indie folk masterpiece.

Stylistically they don’t stray far from “the King is Dead” although the arrangements feel a bit richer overall. Despite this it never feels saturated or busy, and any additional mélange of instruments or flourishes are well placed and deliberate. Everything serves the song, and the melodies – which are a delight – are front and centre throughout.

These melodies feel simple enough, but I know from trying to “dumb down” Decemberist songs to the level of my limited guitar playing, that they are sneaky complicated. Lots of slight variations to chords evoke a complex set of emotions from songs that on the surface feel very straightforward. “Sneaky good” comes to mind.

Songwriter (and lead vocalist) Colin Meloy is ever at the ready with a quiver full of clever (but never trite) turns of phrase. He sings this liquid poetry in his signature high quaver that lifts you up into an elevated headspace where he promptly…makes you think. If you want a mindless beat or a club banger, this stuff is not for you.

Case in point, the opening track, “The Singer Addresses His Audience” in which…the singer addresses his audience. Often singing in character, here Meloy breaks down the fourth wall with the most honest depiction of the relationship between a band and their fans since Rush’s Neil Peart penned the lyrics to “Limelight”. While there are places in “The Singer Addresses His Audience” that are slightly tongue in cheek, it is the kind of gentle kidding that you do among friends. Or in this case in the artificial relationships between the famous and those who adore them.

A few songs later “Make You Better” gets fully serious, with a song of desperate longing. The broken object of affection is only half the story, with the desperate need to help them the other half of the story, a spiral akin to “The Singer Addresses His Audience” but minus any lighthearted element. The song soars ere the end, but it is the soaring of recognition when something is wrong and it is time to fly over it and see it for what it is, and always was.

Those songs are both in the first third of the record, but there are gems a-plenty to follow, right up to the brilliant trio of “Mistral”, “12/17/12” and “A Beginning Song” that finishes the record off.

“A Beginning Song” once again achieves a subtle duality, ending the record with a song that feels like it both wraps all the musical themes up, but also with a newfound hope of discovery that makes you want to go back to the record’s beginning and play it again.

This is, not coincidentally, why it took me so long to get around to writing this review. I just kept cycling back to the beginning and enjoying another full listen. Things never got tiresome for me and if anything, the record just kept unfurling its mysteries.

Best tracks:  The Singer Addresses His Audience, Make You Better, Lake Song, Mistral, 12/17/12, A Beginning Song

CD Odyssey Disc 1141: The Decemberists

Usually when I shop for music I bring with me list of all the albums I’m looking for. This weekend I was a bit out of sorts and found myself in the store with 30 minutes to spare, but no list. I took a chance and working off of memory managed to find four albums on my list. These were:

• Sleater-Kinney “All Hands on the Bad One” (2000)
• Courtney Barnett “Tell Me How You Really Feel” (2018)
• David Francey “The Broken Heart of Everything” (2017)
• Okkervil River “In the Rainbow Rain” (2018)

Actually, only three were on my list. I had intended to listen to a few more songs off the new Okkervil River before deciding. Oops. I hope it all works out. Coincidentally, that’s what happened for this next review.

Disc 1141 is… I’ll Be Your Girl

Artist: The Decemberists

Year of Release: 2018

What’s up with the Cover? I am not a fan of this collage-style art so the less said, the better.

How I Came To Know It: I’m a long-time fan of the Decemberists and I’d liked a couple of the early releases from this album so I took the plunge. Sometimes it isn’t much of a story.

How It Stacks Up:  Of the eight Decemberists albums in my collection, “I’ll Be Your Girl” isn’t the greatest but it holds its own. I’ll rank it…fifth. This bumps “Castaways and Cutouts” down to #6 (it started out at #2 when I only had two albums and it has been getting bumped ever since).

Ratings: 3 stars

Put on your heavy eyeliner and wear black because on “I’ll Be Your Girl” the Decemberists embrace their inner Goth and take you along for the ride.

The big addition here is the atmospheric organ floating along in the mix on many songs, as singer-songwriter Colin Meloy adds another trick to his repertoire. The bones of these songs are still vintage Decemberists. They have folk melodies and archaic-sounding expressions like “a wayward child lost anon” and “the augur of a distant ringing bell” but this is mixed in with synth grooves that would have been at home at a nightclub in 1987.

This could go wrong, but it doesn’t. Meloy wisely lets these additional sounds paint flourishes around the edges of the song, or sit in the back of a very layered mix rather than overwhelm the listener. They’re there for you if you want to flip your hair in your face, and do some eighties dancing. If you don’t, you can just as easily focus on the more traditional sounds of the Decemberists: Meloy’s high vibrata vocal and stories that feel stuck in some kind of semi-magical countryside populated with hidden enchanted springs and faeries waiting to steal you away.

I enjoyed the record both ways, flipping back and forth between enjoying the proto-techno grooves and traditional folk structures that always float my boat. The opening track “Once in My Life” is a good example. It has that heart-worn anthem quality of most Decemberist songs and an easy strum at home on any of their more traditional indie folk offerings, but it also has glum lyrics like:

“Oh for once in my life

Could just something go

Could just something go right?”

…that would make Morrissey or Robert Smith proud and a sad organ that makes you pine for Molly Ringwald.

“Severed” abandons any middle ground early, with a straight up drum, organ groove and a guitar that feels like it wants to be a bass. It isn’t what you expect from the Decemberists, but in a weird way it is familiar. Meloy’s vocals are a big part of that, but so is the structure of the song that has a restless energy that slowly builds but never quite bursts. It is the tension that holds their folkier fare together, and it works here as well.

It isn’t all great. “Everything is Awful” is just that, awful. It feels like a response to that dumb Lego movie song “Everything is Awesome” with lots of silly call and answer and an arrangement that sounds like it belongs on Sesame Street. However, it isn’t the new elements of Goth that wreck it; I just didn’t like the song.

Later in the record the band spreads its wings a bit. “Sucker’s Prayer” has an a.m. radio guitar rock sway that made me think of 1975 and ironic moustaches before they were ironic. O who am I kidding? Those moustaches were always ironic. But I digress – it is a cool song with a bit more guitar than the rest of the record, and it gets bonus points for mentioning my favourite French poet, Charles Baudelaire.

The record ends with the title track, a short little love song, stripped down and touching. Like the rest of the record, the lyrics are creative and evocative. Meloy sings:

“So when everything soft abrades you

When fortune has long betrayed you

And you’re longing for an arm to stay you

I’ll be your girl.”

The song has a hint of the eighties in the plonk of the guitar, but mostly this is the Decemberists stripped down, and Meloy reminding you he could have kept it simple and sweet the whole time but he wanted to stretch his wings a little. That stretching ends up turning into a solid record which is brave without being brazen and sweet without being saccharine. Well played, you crazy folk-Goths.

Best tracks: Once in My Life, Severed, Sucker’s Prayer, I’ll Be Your Girl

CD Odyssey Disc 880: The Decemberists

It would seem we have the beginnings of a run on indie folk music.

Disc 880 is….Picaresque

Artist: The Decemberists

Year of Release: 2005

What’s up with the Cover? It is supposed to look like a low budget stage play, with the character of “Eli, The Barrow Boy” (one of the songs) looking wistfully into the distance. No doubt he is dreaming that if he nails this performance in the high school musical he’ll be on Broadway in no time. No thanks to the set designer, mind you.

How I Came To Know It: Just me drilling through the Decemberists’ back catalogue.

How It Stacks Up:  I have six Decemberists albums, which is all but one of them (I’m going to buy “The Hazards of Love” next time I see it). Of the six I do have, I rate “Picaresque” at #4. Not great against their other work, but I still liked it.

Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4

Colin Meloy was born two hundred years too late, but on “Picaresque” the Decemberists front-man and songwriter shows that he’s adapted well to the conditions.

A “picaresque” is a story with rough edges and rough characters, and the Decemberists’ album follows suit, telling a series of tales that feel like they stepped right out of a dark fairy tale. Meloy is brilliant at such tales and his lyrics feel like a short story about a character that you want to read more about after the song ends.

Meloy has a deep and varied vocabulary and he employs it in an antiquarian way, but always through a prism of modern romanticism that is fresh and interesting. These songs are all original, but have a timeless quality that makes them feel like they are Victorian poems set to music.

The album’s title was a new word to me, and the first line of the first song features the word “palanquin” which I also didn’t know. That song, “The Infanta” captures a moment of pomp and ceremony upon the arrival of some foreign queen on a covered litter (a palanquin). It instantly made me think of what Catherine of Aragon’s arrival in London would have seemed like to commoners lining the streets. While “The Infanta” is not my favourite track (it is a bit manic, if deliberately so) but it is still a good song, filled with the right amount of glitz to match its subject matter.

As with a lot of Decemberists songs, the tragedy is lurking around the corner, but often not spelled out. While not in the song, as listeners we know that Henry VIII would divorce Catherine of Aragon and she would go on to live a large part of her life isolated in a foreign kingdom, where few spoke her native Spanish. If you didn’t know that then this is a good time to point out that history can make art more interesting.

My favourite track on the album is “Eli, The Barrow Boy” a mournful ghost story, well served by an easy strumming  on guitar and the high slight vibrato of Meloy’s voice. Eli dies shortly after his truest love, drowned (or perhaps drowning himself) in the nearby river. His ghost still pushes his barrow when the moon is full. Also, he shows up for album cover shoots.

Immediately after this slow and haunted tune, we get the up-tempo swing of “The Sporting Life” about a promising young athlete who has gone down on the field with some horrific injury. The band’s cheerful music is juxtaposed against the situation, as Meloy manages to capture the manic glory that some find when an athlete gets hurt. The crowd is seeking a compelling comeback story, but the song is from the perspective of the injured athlete, who is starting to see what reality looks like away from the lights:

“And father had such hopes

For a son who would take the ropes

And fulfill all his old athletic aspirations

But apparently now there’s some complications.

“But while I’m lying here

Trying to fight the tears

I’ll prove to the crowd that I come out stronger

(Though I think I might lie here a little longer).”

Unlike a lot of lesser indie folk music, the Decemberists infuse their densely written songs with a core of emotion that makes you care about these characters. On “The Engine Driver,” when Meloy sings “If you don’t love me, let me go” his pleas are deep and poignant. The cold indifference coming in response from the object of his affection is never mentioned, yet forms the core of the song.

“The Mariner’s Revenge Song” is a modern take on a traditional sea shanty. The song is nine minutes of slow building tale of revenge where you know the punchline from the opening verse, but savour every step down into the darkness.

The album doesn’t really have any clunkers, although I found “the Bagman’s Gambit” overlong and “On the Bus Mall” a bit sprawling. They aren’t bad songs, just songs that don’t hold up as well as those around them.

The album ends with “Of Angels and Angles,” a quiet observation of love, with a hint of sadness at the edges that again, is never voiced (I think it is aging, but it is just a guess).

“Picaresque” is a thoughtful album that took some getting used to, but was worth the extra effort.

Best tracks:  Eli the Barrow Boy, The Sporting Life, The Engine Driver, The Mariner’s Revenge Song, Of Angels and Angles

CD Odyssey Disc 490: The Decemberists

Wednesdays are usually hurried affairs, where I race from work to the gym to guitar lessons and back home.  Today guitar lessons were cancelled, so instead I practiced at home for a while and will now turn my attention to some folks that already know how to play guitar, and write good music while doing it.

Disc 490 is… The King is Dead

Artist: The Decemberists

Year of Release:  2011

What’s up with the Cover?  A lovely photo looking up at some conifers.  This cover appeals to me.  I’ve always found the woods a soothing place to go, and these trees remind me of places near where I grew up.

How I Came To Know It:  My friends Cat and Ross introduced me to the Decemberists through a song on their 2006 album, “The Crane Wife” (reviewed back at Disc 154) and I’ve been a fan ever since.  “The King is Dead” was just me buying their recent release when it came out.

How It Stacks Up:  I have five Decemberists albums (I only had two when I last reviewed them, so the collection is growing).  “The King is Dead” is my clear favourite of all of them.  I’m only missing one of their full length studio albums now, but I have a hard time believing it will surpass “The King is Dead” when I do get it.

Rating:  5 stars

Tragically, for many bands their first album is their best album.  In the case of the Decemberists, it is the reverse.  Their most recent release, 2011’s “The King is Dead” is the pinnacle of what they’ve done so far and leaves me with high hopes on what will come next.

This record is the perfect mix of reimagined sixties Brit-pop and modern American folk music, which is the best combination modern indie music manages.  It errs heavily on the side of folk, which is the right side of this particular amalgam to err on.

Listening to this album I was happily reminded of a street corner conversation I recently had with my friend Lawrence, about how all the ‘kids these days’ thought they’d reinvented music, but all they’ve actually done is rediscovered folk music.  Welcome back, music world – me and a few other folks have been keeping the seat warm for you.

Colin Meloy writes a beautiful song, and the tastefully restrained ten tracks on “The King is Dead” is his best work, taking very simple and beautiful constructions and letting them stand on their own, without a lot of excess noise or production wizardry that would only detract from the melodies.

I also love Meloy’s voice on this record.  He has a vibrant and sprightly tone on all his records, but on “the King is Dead” it is perfectly suited to these songs, which are both triumphant and tragic.  These are songs to be sung out like anthems, celebrating the world and refusing to let its darker parts drag you down.

Of course anthems are a lot more than empty slogans; to work they have to have something to say.  The lyrics on this record consistently move me, despite my ongoing insistence to overplay the living hell out of every song.

The album begins with “Don’t Carry It All,” which is a song with a reminder that we are on this planet together, and need to hold one another up as a community.  I’ve always felt that for all our cynicism, mankind’s greatest hope is that our next evolutionary jump will be the one to true empathy.  When I listen to “Don’t Carry It All” I feel the chasm of that jump is that much smaller.  Also, it has some of my favourite lyrics in any folk song, and I’ve heard a few:

“A monument to build beneath the arbors

Upon a plinth that towers t’wards the trees

Let every vessel pitching hard to starboard

Lay its head on summer’s freckled knees.”

Every time I hear this, I see those ships in my mind’s eye leaning hard into the wind, a crew of sailors all leaning hard off the other side of the ship keeping her course true.  Those sailors are us, my friends! Moreover, like the way Meloy ends the song with a healthy dose of responsibility among the roses:

“So raise a glass to turnings of the season

And watch it arc towards the sun

And you must bear your neighbour’s burden within reason

And your labours will be borne when all is done.”

I like that within the teamwork, there is an understanding that we don’t have to carry it all, but we do have to carry our part, and know the rest will work itself out.

There are two hymns on the album, “January Hymn” and “June Hymn.” They’re not really hymns in that they’re not religious in any way unless you count the type of experience they give me when I listen to them.  

“January Hymn” is a song of parting; mournful and sere, just like January can be.  The chorus captures the single moment the song revolves around.

“What were the words I meant to say before you left?

When I could see your breath lead

Where you were going to.”

There is a beautiful disconnect expressed here, as Meloy cleverly writes the line to intimate that the person the narrator wishes to speak his heart to has already turned away – physically and otherwise.  A great song doesn’t beat you over the head with it; it establishes the emotion and lets the words carry you through it.

“June Hymn” is, as you’d expect, the opposite of its wintry cousin.  Scenes of spring abound, turning to the full bloom of summer and the possibilities of the future.  Images of ‘Garland all the lawn’, ‘A barony of ivy in the trees’ mingle with the human activity of ‘pegging clothing on the line’ but the best line is the sound of birds blending their songs in the background:

“Here’s a hymn to welcome in the day

Heralding a summer’s early sway

And all the bulbs coming in

To begin

The thrushes bleating with the wrens

Disrupts my reverie again.”

Damn that’s good stuff, and the music just makes it better.  It made me download some chords and tabs just in the hopes I can one day play it on guitar, and maybe add my own bleating to the lyrics.

Even the songs that appear to be a bit derivative, like “Rox in the Box” which lifts the traditional melody straight from the folk classic “Raggle Taggle Gypsy” does so as an homage, building on that tradition rather than stealing from it.  When I finally recognized why I knew the riff so well it wasn’t a betrayal, it was a revelation.

On a completely different note, I like that Meloy, with his heavy build, bad fashion and awkward haircut, is able to have a good career and get noticed for his craft.  Video temporarily killed the radio star, but with video banished to the fractured audience of Youtube, the radio star is making a comeback online.  Hooray for those who have the music, ugly or otherwise.

“The King is Dead” is only forty minutes long soaken-wet, and when it ends it leaves you wanting more.  In fact, it left me that way so many times I kept listening to it instead of writing the review and moving on.  Sorry for the delay on the CD Odyssey as a result, but it couldn’t be helped.  This record inspires me, and moreover it reminds me that I can still be inspired by music being written today as much as music from forty years ago.  For all the young people being inspired for the first time this way, I can only hope that they go on to do great things, musically or otherwise.  I’ll raise a glass to the turning of that season.

Best tracks:  All tracks, but my favourites include Don’t Carry it All, Rise to Me, Rox in the Box, January Hymn, June Hymn and This is Why We Fight

CD Odyssey Disc 154: The Decemberists

I wasn't sure I'd get through this latest album until Monday, but had to run a quick errand in the car, and it got me through the last few tracks.

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 Decemberists

Year 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

CD Odyssey Disc 47: The Decemberists

And...we're back to new album time. What can I say - I bought a lot of new albums. This one is the result of someone giving me a mixed tape.

Disc 47 is...Castaways and Cutouts

Artist: The Decemberists

Year of Release: 2002

How I Came To Know It: I learned about the Decemberists earlier this year, when my friends Catherine and Ross did me a mixed CD for my birthday. It is an awesome mixed CD - with songs from both of them all mashed up (it's a mash up!). And they both have great musical tastes. Anyway - the Decemberists is Catherine, and a few months ago I bought the album with the single she shared with me (and liked it). So I decided I wanted a second album (that's how I roll - when I'm not rolling randomly).

I picked this one for the cover art. A tried and true method of buying an album!

How It Stacks Up: I was surprised how many Decemberists albums there were (I thought maybe two, but there's a lot more). As for me, I've only got 2. They are close, but I've got to put this one at #2 of the two. More on #1 when I roll it.

Rating: 3 stars.

The Decemberists are an indie type band, in the modern style of that movement. I like them because they have a folksie quality to their music (if you read this, you know I go for the folk).

This album is kind of a summation of what is good about indie and what is bad.

What is good - the lyrics are clever, and the music well constructed with simple, but appealing arrangements. In the case of the Decemberists, they sing about a lot of weird-ass stuff that has a historical bent to it, and I like that.

This particular album has a track about a ghost, whose body lies in a ravine "Leslie Anne Levine" - yes they use the rhyme. There is also a song called "A Cautionary Song" which tells the story of a woman who waits for her children to go to sleep, and then sells herself to sailors in the harbour, and uses the money to buy her kids food (in this case "collard greens").

Other tracks have the annoying indie habit of painting an interesting image, or series of images that don't quite add up to a a full picture. It is kind of like Impressionist painting, but stepping back doesn't help you see it any better.

The second annoying element is that the lead singer's voice has that kind of high vibrato thing that a lot of these acts use. It is a great voice, but it has an affected feeling that makes it feel emotionally detached in places.

I think that's the idea, but I wish that these songs were slightly more linear, and sung with a little more heart. Still, overall a good entry in the Decemberists catalogue - and worth listening to. I'm glad I got introduced to this band. I'm going to let these two albums sink in and think about getting another one down the road...

Best tracks: Leslie Ann Levine, Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect, July, July, A Cautionary Song