The Hazards of Love 4 – The Decemberists
Ill-conceived, poorly executed, tiresome, ridiculous. These are not words I ever wanted to write about a Decemberists album. And yet, what else can I do?
That band that I fell in love with on Valentine’s Day, 2003 (when they opened for Carissa’s Wierd), they wrote dreamy songs that glowed like the porchlight of a house in the woods in the deep mist of a cold evening. Even more, they made music that beckoned invitingly. It was corny, occasionally overwrought, but never felt the least bit false. The result was songs like “Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect” or “Grace Cathedral Hill” – which expected a little something from you, but which were ready to reveal themselves if you made the effort.
For the next few albums, they drifted further and further away from the magical sense of that first record. But you couldn’t really begrudge them, because they were putting out basically a record a year and had still failed to produce a single song that I didn’t like.
However, all the warning signs were there. The experimentation with the prog-rock Tain EP, the movement toward longer, more operatic, less tuneful songs. Picaresque was a good album, but if what I loved about the band originally was the dreaminess of their sound, then it represented the experience of waking up and grimacing at a far less charmful world. Then there was The Crane Wife, which featured five songs that suggested a return – a glorious, beautiful return – but also had a run of four songs (The Perfect Crime 2, When the War Came, Shankill Butchers, Summersong) that ranged from boring to horrifically bad.
The question was where they would go from there. Sadly, if Hazards of Love is any indication, they see their future as a literary prog-metal band. Gone is the gentle subtlety. Gone is the sense of restraint. Quirkiness has now been replaced by full-bore art-rock squalls. Frankly, it’s a bit embarrassing to listen to in patches. And the few solid songs that dot the landscape are lost under the sea of “what were they thinking?”
The record opens (opens!) with a minute of silence. At various points later in the record you almost wish they’d default back to that. The next track “The Hazards of Love 1” isn’t terrible, but is pretty one-note.
However, before you can lose hope, the next three tracks are all pretty decent, which is enough to give you a dollop of hope. “A Bower Scene” feels a bit too mid-period Death Cab, but is good enough. And then there’s “Won’t Want for Love,” which incorporates female vocals and a bit of a dirty guitar riff into a pretty solid little track. Finally, “The Hazards of Love 2” would fit in reasonably on one of the past few records. In combination, they hint at what this record might have been.
Unfortunately, things go downhill quickly. “Isn’t It a Lovely Night” is a pretty spectacular failure to produce a male/female harmony. It’s even more frustrating given how perfectly Meloy and Laura Veirs fit together on “Yankee Bayonet” from the last record. And then there’s “The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid” which is the track I’m mostly thinking of when I talk about being embarrassed. Yikes. I hope to never hear that one again in my life.
There are very few songs of note from there on. “Interlude” is pleasant, but at 1:40 it doesn’t offer anything more than you’d expect from the title. “The Rake’s Song” is like the zombie doppelganger of the character sketches from Castaways and Cutouts. Where that album portrayed the misbegotten in clever and intriguing ways, this time around it shuffles along with all the subtlety of a 2×4 to the face. “The Abduction of Margaret” is admittedly another nice track, but once again is only about two minutes long. But the next four tracks all fall into the “if I never hear them again, it’ll be too soon” category. “The Hazards of Love 3” in particular, makes me grit my teeth just thinking about it.
Finally, after wading through all that muck, there is one brief shining light in “The Hazards of Love 4” which is legitimately a very good song. It’s almost enough to make up for some of the muck you had to wade through to get to it. Still, on an album pushing an hour, there’s probably only 20 minutes worth of music I’ll ever go out of my way to listen to again. And, considering this is coming from a band that might otherwise have challenged for the title of my favorite band of the aughts, that’s pretty sad.
Here’s what it all comes down to. The thing I always loved about The Decemberists is the way that they could make music that felt like it was written just for me. They put themselves out there and invited you to join them on a romp. The Hazards of Love has none of that sentiment. This is self-absorbed art, made with pretension, cold and dark. They want you to Be Impressed or Be Amazed, but there’s absolutely no sense of a shared connection. You can take it or leave it as you like, but there’s no sense that they want you to be a part of it. For me, that’s what sets it apart – and what ruins it.
I realize I’ve completely failed to talk about the story of the album. That’s because I’m simply not willing to put in the effort necessary to figure it out. Maybe it’s clever, but I’m not really willing to listen to music I don’t like to find out.