The Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts
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Music CD Cover
Artist: The DecemberistsEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Original recording reissued
CD Release Date: 2003-05-06
Music Label: Kill Rock Stars
Soundtracks:
- Leslie Anne Levine
- Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect
- July, July!
- A Cautionary Song
- Odalisque
- Cocoon
- Grace Cathedral Hill
- The Legionnaire's Lament
- Clementine
- California One
- Youth and Beauty Brigade
Free Music Notes for Castaways and Cutouts
Free Music Review: That rare thing: an album with no bad songs
Hit: 5 Stars
It can be a fun exercise to look at albums you love and work out how many of the tracks are "good", "great" versus "average", "bad" and so on. A sort of measure of an album's 'hit rate', if you will. Castaways and Cutouts is a rare thing in that context: every track on it is good, and in fact all but one (the slightly silly A Cautionary Song) are downright brilliant.
I won't go into the specific themes, which have been covered well elsewhere. Suffice to say this album is infused with a strange sort of timeless character. It speaks of some half-defined, sepia-toned era which seems to span pirates, the eighteenth century, World War One, World War Two, and the present day all at once. Characters and places seem to rise and fall out of the historical mist: now we are in a desert in North Africa with a lonely soldier, now riding a motorbike through contemporary San Francisco, now in a sailing ship moored in some anonymous harbour.
In a world of songs which seem to principally be about either the anguish of modern love or the travails of being a successful musician (my heart bleeds) it's startling to hear songs which are actually about... well, interesting things. People, places, times other than those in our own, limited modern lives. This is an ancient and essential function of music, to tell us stories and take us away from where we are to somewhere we can only imagine.
Two things really stand out. One, Colin Meloy's lyrics are utterly amazing and would stand alone as poems even without the music. Two, the music itself is, at times, perfectly gorgeous. While a handful of songs have hints of the energy of Irish or British folk music about them (for example, the relatively fast paced "July, July!"), the real power of the album is in the slower, more melancholy songs. It might be a strange comparison, but the complexity of the shifting harmonies and time signatures in certain places (particularly the brilliant "Odalisque") reminds me of Tool in terms of technique, if not in terms of sound. The songs rise and fall and shift about subtly as you listen. This is one of those albums where the deceptively straightforward tracks ultimately prove to be the most rewarding: songs like "Cocoon", "Grace Cathedral Hill" and "Clementine" may come off as rather quiet, sad songs at first, but given time they will unfold and reveal the depth and heft that was hidden just below the surface all along.
This album seems to have slipped a little in the "average rating" stakes lately. I can only assume that this is because quite a number of people have been drifting back through the Decemberists catalogue via The Crane Wife and The Hazards of Love. Whilst those albums represent worthy attempts to evolve, they are frankly not a patch on the band's first few albums and EPs, including this one. To those working backwards, please, give these albums the time and space they deserve. Forget the unwieldy metal/folk hybrid of recent albums and come to this with an open mind: I think you will find it is an infinitely more rewarding experience than the band's more current, less elegant work.
Castaways and Cutouts Poster
As its title would suggest, Castaways and Cutouts is a record populated with an eclectic array of unlikely characters in various states of abandonment and revelry. While the likes of Spanish gypsies, infant specters, and Turkish prostitutes are not common elements to be found within modern pop music, these figures find ample footing within the songcraft of Mr. Meloy, supported comfortably by the band's lush and orchestral instrumentation. Recorded over a two month period in a warehouse in Portland, Oregon's Industrial Southeast, the record swims gracefully between heart-rending, deftly arranged pop and scrappy off-the-cuff dirge.Alternative Rock Music CDs
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