Some Decemberists news today. Pitchfork had an update on Friday with a whole new set of tour dates (including a Halloween show in Northampton that I’m hoping to get to), and news about the new album The Crane Wife, due out on October 3. Talk about prolific. When was the last year that Colin Meloy and company didn’t have a new album? Their homepage has more information:
This lovely would’ve-been-a-double-in-the-seventies-record (which tip-toes over the temporal finish line at just over 60 min.!) will hit the shelves (and e-shelves) of discriminating record stores (and e-stores) promptly on October the 3rd. … The band will be doling out bits and parcels of information regarding this record over the coming months as a way to soothe and placate you, the salacious music enthusiast.
I’ll be looking forward to it. Even what I consider their weakest effort last year was still among my favorite records of the year. Plus, one of the songs is a duet with Laura Veirs, and you all know how I love her.
And, here’s a couple of my favorite old Decemberists songs:
My absolute favorite song by them. While I’ve enjoyed the directions they’ve gone and their willingness to experiment on their more recent albums, a big part of me wishes they would just re-make Castaways and Cutouts over and over and over. As the stories have become more involved, as the instrumentation has become more complex, the one thing I sometimes feel they’ve lost some of the purity and dreaminess that made this song (and that whole album) one of my all-time favorites.
By this, I mean that in their more recent work, the story has become the song (or perhaps the song has become the story)–a vehicle to fill in all the details of the plot. In contrast, “Grace Cathedral Hill” is so compelling because the details are ephemeral: two people, a little confused, wandering the city looking for happiness or perhaps fulfillment. It is completely prosaic and yet heartbreakingly real. And that chorus! Such beauty, such innocence!
And the world maybe be long for you,
but he’ll never belong to you.
But on a motorbike,
when all the city lights blind your eyes tonight,
are you feeling better now?
This is one of their earliest works, available on the Five Songs EP (the joke being that there are six songs). It’s got a slightly dark feel and a great melody (I think lilting is the word I’m looking for). Hearkening back to Meloy’s Tarkio days, it’s about as alt-country as they’ve ever been, but is still clearly a Decemberists tune. For some reason, the thing that always gets me on this song is the drumming. It’s not really anything that special, but the slight variations in volume and the occasional (and never completely expected) rolls really set the tone for me.
While we’re on the subject of the Decemberists, here’s a few more songs (by way of Kill Rock Stars), all of which are among their best:
The Soldiering Life
Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect
The Engine Driver
And, you can download a demo version of “The Tain, Part 1” at their Myspace page. Good stuff…