The Decemberists
What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
20 January 2015
Capitol
3.5 stars out of 5
Portland-based prog-folkers The Decemberists have built a career
upon elaborate artifice. Their albums are generally concept pieces, often with
seafaring or military themes, in which leader Colin Meloy constructs elaborate
first-person narratives from the point of view of characters who are,
presumably, long dead (if they ever lived at all) from some sort of obsolete
gold rush-era disease. As a concept, it all seems so trite and clichéd as to
reek of bullshit, but Meloy delivers his insincere lyrics so sincerely that one
can’t help but to be sucked into his ornate world of historical biography set
to music.
As for the new record, What
a Terrible/Beautiful World, it seems to be an attempt to recapture the
magic the band had on their last great record, 2005’s Picaresque. This was also their last for Kill Rock Stars. After
that they signed to Capitol, put out the incredibly dull and labouring The Crane Wife, and the rather
forgettable exercise in loud(er) rock that was The Hazards of Love, as well as the mostly ignored The King Is Dead. In 2015 they seem to
be again trying to recapture the form they had a decade before, and for the
most part they succeed. They’ve traded in their Fairport Convention influences
for a combination of Neil Young’s country records and, well, early Decemberists.
The result is less concept and more pure songs, arranged and performed with
exquisite attention to detail. Meloy—while he still enjoys weaving a good
rustic tale of soldiers on horseback every now and then—throws himself into his
songs, sounding less like an academic, giving you abstract concepts, and more
like a singer, giving you an actual performance.
It’s a relief to see this once great band finally making
baby steps back towards those qualities which made them great in the first
place: melody and melancholy, with a healthy dose of knowing winks. While Terrible/Beautiful doesn’t quite match Picaresque in terms of immediate
gratification and relevance, it’s certainly a good attempt.
reviewed by Richard Krueger
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