The Decemberists - Her Majesty the Decemberists

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Free Music Notes for Her Majesty the Decemberists

Free Music Review: i love it. but i'm tired. so here's pitchforkmedia.com's:
Hit: 5 Stars

There's a crash and a scream, and a groaning sound of a warship coming to rape the harbor: that's right, The Decemberists have another song about pirates. "Tell your daughters do not walk the streets alone tonight!" cries Colin Meloy with nasal urgency, and the band gives it more drama-- you can almost smell the mothballs on their costumes-- than ever before, lunging into an aesthetic that's half Dickens, half 50s adventure comic book. They don't care that some listeners won't even make it past this song-- or that some people don't want to hear a pirate story no matter how well it's told.

The Decemberists may never escape the label "quirky," which is a crime: whatever the style, Colin Meloy's songwriting makes them one of the strongest bands working today. His melodies are so perfect and his words so substantial that it reminds you how much slack you cut most other bands. Too many singers mumble or screech as if they didn't trust or care about their words: Meloy declares his lyrics, lets his work live or die by them, and sets them in masterful pop songs.

Yet their confidence actually makes Her Majesty The Decemberists less accessible than their other records. Their earliest material, on the 5 Songs EP, didn't stray far from acoustic alt-country, but their first full-length, Castaways and Cutouts-- which many people only discovered a few months ago, thanks to its reissue on Kill Rock Stars-- was a revelation, sometimes brilliant and sometimes a beautiful accident. Its dreamy tone erred on the side of melancholy; by contrast, Her Majesty veers to the theatrical as Meloy steps up the role playing and tells more intricate stories.

On "Shanty for the Arethusa" and "The Chimbley Sweep", the band marches aggressively past the just-skilled-enough playing of their other albums, sounding like a version of The Coral that's twice as smart (and half as loud). The horns, strings and keys that they brought in this time sweeten the production, and they nail the upbeat Britpop arrangement on "Billy Liar", a song about a dull summer break that has what sounds like a love-stricken chorus. There's also romance in "A Soldiering Life", a homoerotic ode to the military. It's winningly clever, and even if it's not the deepest song in their repertoire, you have to credit Meloy's enthusiasm when he practically drools the word "stevedore." And it's just one display of the surgical precision of Meloy's lyrics, along with the taut ballad "Red Right Ankle", or the rich images in "Bachelor and the Bride".

But what's most intriguing about Meloy's style isn't when he's literary or kitschy; it's the strange tension he creates by mashing both qualities together. "Los Angeles I'm Yours" sounds odd, not just because he matches the disgusted lyrics with a breezy tune, but in the way that he throws old-fashioned, florid language-- references to "orphans and oligarchs," taunts like "I can see your undies"-- against ultra-chic, post-modern Los Angeles. And in "Red Right Ankle", he idly flips between a metaphorical and anatomical use of the word "heart": describing a girl's suitors, he sings, "Some had crawled their way into your heart/ To rend your ventricles apart." We know Meloy can slop through pirate gore in one song and write poetry in the next, but it's more interesting to hear how easily he can do both-- and how willfully he'll do either.

As they get bolder, The Decemberists have lost some of the uncertain dreaminess of the best songs on Castaways-- say, "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect" or "Grace Cathedral Hill". That album's near-transcendent closer, "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade", is replaced by "I Was Meant for the Stage", where Meloy doesn't just state his ambitions: he stands at the front of the crowd and waits for the tomatoes to fly.

And that's what makes it a defining album. Maybe from here they'll become an esoteric cult band-- or maybe they'll keep getting better: either way, they've established themselves so thoroughly that I was able to make it through an entire review without comparing them to Neutral Milk Hotel or namechecking Edward Gorey. They're an unclassifiable American original, and they could turn out to be one of our best.

-Chris Dahlen, September 8th, 2003

Her Majesty the Decemberists Poster

For all intents and purposes, Her Majesty is best described as the charming older brother to the band's previous outing. And, while being recognizably related to its sibling, it is an altogether different beast. Present and accounted for are the Victorian literary tropes, the rakish mariners, and the Dickensian downtrodden that slouched their way across the laser imprinted surface of Castaways and Cutouts. But on Her Majesty, a new cast of characters is introduced, giving further depth to the richly bizarre songcraft of the band's bespectacled leading player, Colin Meloy: an aristocratic Jewess slumming it blindfolded among the exotic avenues of a Chinese bazaar, the coifed and coked-up bon vivants of greater Los Angeles, the writer Myla Goldberg, and a pair of affectionate soldiers celebrating their camaraderie among the mortar blasts and trench mud of WWI Belgium. Musically, the band travels over new territory as well, mining deeper into their Beatle-pop influences to create a record that is as lush as it is intricate.

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