Friday, January 16, 2015

The Decemberists - What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World

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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