In about an hour, I’m leaving for Lexington, Kentucky (where I intend to eat at the Waffle House and hopefully go to a Meijer), so I may miss a day or two between now and next Tuesday. And what I do post will probably be at least marginally less long-winded.
Tarkio
You like the Decemberists, of course. But you may not have heard Tarkio, Colin Meloy’s band from back in his days in Helena, Montana. Never fear, virtually everything they ever recorded has now been compiled onto a two-disc album Omnibus.
I’ll start with the bad. The Decemberists have been one of my very favorite bands for a few years now (I’d seriously consider Castaways and Cutouts as my choice for best album of the Aughts), but Tarkio is not The Decemberists. The instrumentation is a lot more basic – it is, for the most part, pretty much completely embedded in folk-country-cum-college-rock genre, replete with finger-plucked guitars, prancing organs, and hand-claps. The dreamy atmosphere, the lyrics so clever you can’t believe it, obsessively historical songs, you can sense these things percolating in Meloy’s brain during his Tarkio years, but they are far from being fully realized. A number of these songs start with an interesting hook but let it drag on too long, some of them aren’t really that interesting in the first place (“Kickaround” and “Annabelle Leigh,” for example, are dreary and dull, while “Am I Not Right?” shows that, while Meloy’s voice is usually quirkily pleasant, it can veer into the realm of grating and piercing).
That said, it’s still worth a listen and probably a purchase if you’re a Decemberists fan. The weaker moments are relatively rare and there are a few songs that are quite enjoyable. A couple of my favorites:
Weight of the World
This is a delightfully poppy song. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if Meloy was in an alt-country band, this is your chance to find out. And there’s that moment about two and a half minutes in where the pace slows for a second and his voice cracks when it is just so delightfully imprecise. It’s just the kind of song that sounds like a lot of fun.
Caroline AvenueSister Nebraska
These two tracks have a lot of similarities. To pick a word: they’re jaunty. I might even go so far as to call them chipper. There are a couple nicely placed strings, a little bit of the organ, a nice beat, and a rapidly-picked banjo, which just makes it sound perfect for a college coffeehouse show. Even at this point, he was already an excellent lyricist, with a number of interesting phrasings and great images.
To be sure, they’re not as mature as his later work, but that’s part of the charm. My only real complaint about The Decemberists is that they sometimes get a little too dour and serious. The human element doesn’t always get enough room. At its best, Tarkio helps to reveal the soul behind the music. As on “Sister Nebraska” when he sings “I will call you up and say ‘ain’t this life a riot?’ / And you will understand” and then closes the song with “It’s been a long, cold winter, and now I’m coming home.” Both The Decemberists and Tarkio deal with a world that is sometimes baffling (whether it be because of love or because of pirates), but Tarkio helps us remember that sometimes confusion is just an excuse for a grin and an exuberant song. And that’s a reminder that we could use every now and again.
Oh, and check out I Guess I’m Floating (who I link to like it’s my job) for some songs by The Young Republic. One of those bands that I listened to last winter, completely forgot about, and then, after being reminded of them, realized I actually like them quite a lot. It’s nice when that happens.