The Decemberists

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The Decemberists

The Decemberists "The King Is Dead" album

- Release date : January 2011 -

The King Is Dead is the sixth studio album by The Decemberists, released on January 18, 2011 under Capitol Records.

The King Is Dead was recorded during the spring of 2010, with most of it being made in a six week period in a barn at an 8-acre (32,000 m2) site called Pendarvis Farm, which is near Portland, Oregon. The album title has been speculated to pay homage to The Smiths 1986 album The Queen Is Dead, largely due to Colin Meloy's long-touted influence from the band. It was co-produced by Tucker Martine. At least three of the ten songs have been performed live in 2010, which are "Down By the Water", "Rise to Me", and "June Hymn". Meloy has cited that a primary musical influence for much of The King Is Dead is the band R.E.M., and three songs, "Don't Carry It All", "Calamity Song", and "Down by the Water" feature R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck. The King Is Dead has been called the "most pastoral, rustic record they've ever made" by Douglas Wolk of Rolling Stone.

"The King Is Dead" album tracks and lyrics

"The King Is Dead" album reviews

When a 12-and-a-half-minute murder ballad ("The Island," from 2006's The Crane Wife) stands as one of your more concise career high points, it's probably time to consider reining things in. That's just what the Decemberists — the Portland, Oregon, band known for its complex story-songs about fairy queens and shape-shifting lovers — have done on The King Is Dead. What's remarkable is how much richness and beauty the group has folded into the 40-minute album: The melodies are sticky, the harmonies sumptuous, the arrangements (centering on guitars, fiddle, accordion, harmonica and pedal steel) unfussy. Mastermind Colin Meloy hasn't abandoned his lust for Scrabble-champ words ("gabardine," "plinth") and fantastical narratives. But he's figured out how to work both into compact songs without disturbing the flow.

Meloy and his band had some help. R.E.M.'s back catalog provided some templates: "Calamity Song" sounds like it was lifted from Murmur, and guitarist Peter Buck does a great Peter Buck impression on three songs. Also crucial is Gillian Welch, whose close harmonies buoy everything. Per usual, Meloy's lyrics are elliptical and ornate, with phrases conjuring the distant past ("a wreath of trillium and ivy") or tweaking the present ("the chewable Ambien tab"). But more than ever, his songs savor straightforward pleasures. On "June Hymn," the album's most gorgeous track, a tremulous Meloy rhymes "bloom," "boom," "maroon" and "living room" over strummed guitar like a crushed-out poetry student. For a band able to push the limits of songwriting, it's a revelation, and a chance to see how deep simplicity goes. Very deep, it turns out.

*** by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone ***

The best thing about the new Decemberists record is what it lacks: a concept. On 2009's The Hazards of Love, these Portland-based nerd's nerds tragically overdosed on rock-operatic ambition, piling allegorical characters and complicated story lines so high that they ended up building a sort of fortress for themselves. Inside those walls, frustratingly out of reach for anyone not dazzled by the album's Byzantine narrative, lay frontman Colin Meloy's melodic gift and his bandmates' crackerjack playing. Outside? A bunch of overworked crap about forests and fairies.

No Decemberists fan could say he didn't see it coming, of course. Meloy's been cuckoo for rococo puffs since the band's first EP, on which he spun an apocryphal little yarn titled "My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist." (Dude grew up in Montana.) And The Crane Wife, the Decemberists' 2006 major-label debut, included an elaborate retelling of a Japanese folk tale. Still, Hazards was too much even by Meloy's standards -- something of a jump-the-shark moment for a guy who probably refers to sharks as bruins of the brine.

Ten crisp roots-rock tunes in a mere 40 minutes, The King Is Dead finds the Decemberists in serious course-correction mode -- which is a relief, if also kind of sad. Hazards sorta sucked, it's true, but you had to admire the band's chutzpah; here they seem a little chastened, and the result is an relatively unweighty effort from these career overachievers. That may in fact have been what they were after: "Let the yoke fall from our shoulders," Meloy sings in opener "Don't Carry It All," before urging us to "raise a glass to turnings of the season." Welcome to Fun-uary, everybody!

Though the album's title makes you think of the Smiths' The Queen Is Dead -- Meloy is an avowed fan, and even released a solo EP of Morrissey covers in 2005 -- King pays more obvious tribute to R.E.M., whose Peter Buck contributes mandolin and 12-string guitar to a handful of tracks. "Calamity Song," in particular, could be an outtake from Murmur or Reckoning, with a lyric that channels the ironic nihilism of "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Buck shows up again in the surprisingly muscular "Down by the Water," as does Gillian Welch on harmony vocals, her astringent holler smartly complementing Meloy's bleat.

Welch's presence isn't the only touch of Americana; "All Arise!" is a rowdy honky-tonk hoedown, while "Rox in the Box" shares some string-band DNA with Black Prairie, an avant-bluegrass Decemberists side project led by guitarist Chris Funk and bassist Nate Query. As rustic as some of this music is, though, Meloy still can't resist flexing his rarefied vocabulary, throwing in a "plinth" here and a "trillium" there.

But he also reveals a knowing sense of humor about it all. After extravagantly describing a turn-of-the-century financier as the "queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab" in "Calamity Song," he stage-whispers slyly, "Know what I mean?" And the singer appears most deeply engaged with The King Is Dead's more direct, plainspoken moments; on "Rise to Me," he simply addresses his real-life son Henry by name, and "January Hymn" begins with this lovely image: "On a winter's Sunday I go / To clear away the snow / And green the ground below." No allegory, no fairies, no fortress. Nice, right?

*** by Mikael Wood, Spin Magazine ***