I want to take a long drive through the mountains listening to the new the Decemberists‘ album The King is Dead: in the springtime, when the glaciers are just starting to melt and it’s not so hot so we can drive with the windows down instead of using the air conditioning, with our hands making waves outside the car windows along to the breeze.
It hit me today as I was walking my dog with my earbuds in listening to “June Hymn,” one of the latter songs on The King is Dead, how much I loved it. I’d heard the song live back when I saw the Decemberists at MusicFest Northwest in Portland September, but I’d forgotten how beautiful it was.
Beautiful. If I had to come up with one word to describe The King is Dead, it would be that. A stark difference from the epic folk opera The Hazards of Love, and closer to the feeling of The Crane Wife, but far simpler. The King is Dead is a collection of truly lovely ballads, heartbreaking laments, and down-home ditties. Even though the band consists of seven regular members, many of the best songs on the album, “January Hymn,” “June Hymn,” and “Dear Avery” feature for the most part front man Colin Meloy’s acoustic guitar and his wonderful harmonies with guest Gillian Welch.
The album starts off with the upbeat “Don’t Carry It All,” which aptly begins with the harmonica, giving us a glaring hint of what’s to come. We continue on with “Calamity Song,” a song that at first listen is catchy and delightful, but with Meloy’s clever song-crafting, you come to realize that it’s about the end of civilization. With phrases like “queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab” and “in the year of the chewable Ambien tab,” no wonder Meloy can trick us into singing along gleefully to a song about the end of days. Nearing the end of the album come a couple of sure-hits, “This Is Why We Fight” and “Down By The Water,” the latter of which was released back in November 2010.
There are a few songs on the album that almost remind me of “yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,” but not a campy pirate shanty. Probably due to the accordion and fiddle, “Rox in the Box” makes you want to grab a pint and hike up your skirt and do a little jig, figuratively speaking. But the Decemberists’ sound is so very much their own, none of it seems out of place.
Now I don’t like country, but based on everything that the Decemberists employ on this album, you could call it country. Country…folk…rock…whatever it is, I like it. If all country sounded like this, with the subtle mandolin, banjo, not-so-subtle harmonica, and accordion, I’d be a country fan.
Earlier I said I’d like to listen to this album whilst driving through the mountains. I lied. I’d like to listen to it everywhere. It’s a throwback to when music, when life, when everything was simpler. Even to when recording was simpler, seeing that The King Is Dead was actually recorded in a barn outside Portland.
I’d be all for a barn tour. Now that would be the perfect place to listen to it, in a barn laying in a pile of old straw with the sun creeping in through the cracks in the decaying wood walls.
Track Listing:
- Don’t Carry It All
- Calamity Song
- Rise To Me
- Rox In The Box
- January Hymn
- Down By The Water
- All Arise!
- June Hymn
- This Is Why We Fight
- Dear Avery
