Decemberists - Troubadours at Her Majesty's court

Formed around young singer-songwriter Colin Meloy, the Decemberists are one of the most vibrant recent examples of classic American folk-rock combined with an eccentric narrative streak and a natural “indie” sensibility, enough to spread their music to a much wider audience.

The band came together in 2000 in Portland's inexhaustible music scene, the city Meloy had just moved to from his native Montana, where he had abandoned the brief alt-country experience of Tarkio after one album and a couple of EPs. Back in the Oregon city - where he had already spent a period studying at university - Meloy slotted easily into the thriving local arts scene, where he first met bassist Nate Query and pianist/organist Jenny Conlee, who would form the band's core, even as it later proved open to numerous collaborations and lineup changes.

The original lineup was then rounded out by guitarist Chris Funk and drummer Ezra Holbrook, who would leave the band shortly after the release of the first album.

Decisive to the musical identity of the Decemberists is the figure of Colin Meloy, who defines the band not only through his vaguely nasal, initially rather unpolished voice, but above all through the literary and theatrical bent of his lyrics, which clearly reflect his background, including, not by chance, university courses in creative writing. Equally defining is Meloy's brilliant spirit, evident right from the name chosen for the band, whose reference to the Decembrist revolts essentially mirrors the combative streak found in so many of his songs.

The band's first recorded statement was a self-released mini-album of just five tracks, simply titled 5 Songs Ep, yet already enough to convey the freshness of its musical vision.

Across its scant twenty minutes, soft, lulling shades steeped in rural atmosphere alternate with brisk-paced ballads. While the former ("Oceanside", "I Don't Mind") display an excellent melodic sensibility and uncommon lyrical gifts, the latter fully reveal the authentic essence of the Decemberists' artistic inspiration and their storytelling, poised between a tragic, desolate view of human fate and popular depictions - part theatre, part dance-hall - built around guitar and accordion.

Among the Ep's five tracks, at least a couple of true gems take shape: "My Mother Was A Chinese Trapeze Artist" and, above all, "Shiny", shining examples of melodic fluidity and an expressive delicacy never weighed down by an instrumental palette that's rich but never overblown.

The Ep immediately caught the attention of a label, the small but sharp-eared Hush, which the following year released the band's first official album, Castaways And Cutouts, ten songs populated by a colourful human gallery of outcasts and outsiders, who, through Meloy's voice, tell their bittersweet stories, steeped in melancholy and fatalism yet marked by a pronounced streak of irony.

Likewise, the record offers a broad showcase of the band's qualities and expressive range, able to shift between rounded melodies, airy arrangements, electric ripples and touches of mild psychedelia, conjured by the frequent presence of vintage-flavoured organs.

It's precisely the interplay of organ and harmonica that shapes the songs into ever-different registers, matching the brisk, romantic pace of Meloy's narratives or shaping melodies that are mostly quiet, though at times they suddenly swell upward, as in "Odalisque" and the delightfully lopsided tango of "A Cautionary Song", entirely dominated by Conlee's accordion.

Alongside songs with a more complex structure and a freewheeling momentum, Castaways And Cutouts also reveals the more essential side of Meloy and co.'s songwriting, often stripped down to lone guitar accompaniment ("Clementine") and the sweet downtempo of ballads such as "Cocoon" and "Grace Cathedral Hill", with softened edges but also slightly more muted than the lively indie-folk shades of the engaging melodic phrasing and lean rhythms found, for instance, in "July, July!" and "The Legionnaire's Lament".

The narrative and theatrical elements of the debut album, combined with an approach straddling American tradition and a more decidedly rock accessibility, invite a comparison between the Decemberists' early trajectory and that of the broadly parallel Okkervil River. Compared to Will Sheff's band, however, the one led by Colin Meloy shows from the outset a notable knack for pop immediacy, albeit filtered through a complex instrumental framework that at times betrays a certain tendency toward grandiloquence - an element that would accompany the whole of his later career and which, already on the debut album, is highlighted by the ten minutes of the closing "California One Youth And Beauty Brigade", whose soft, bucolic shades flow into a controlled crescendo, revealing a vague progressive taste.

The spontaneity of the band's output and its disenchanted approach met with immediate acclaim, drawing ambitious comparisons that, besides recalling the contemporary work of Bright Eyes and Okkervil River, even reach as far as the Elephant 6 collective and, in particular, the songwriting of Jeff Mangum, to whom the subtle freak streak underlying Colin Meloy's way of approaching musical storytelling has been likened.

A direct consequence of the acclaim earned by the debut album came in two telling moves on record: first, the wider-scale reissue of the 5 Songs Ep, in a carefully curated edition enriched with a sixth track, "Apology Song"; then the move to Kill Rock Stars, a label that, while still independent, operated on a scale (and with a reach) quite different from the smaller Hush.

And so, with Holbrook replaced by Rachel Blumberg and bassist Jesse Emerson temporarily brought into the line-up in place of Nate Query, in little more than a year and a half after the debut it was already time for the second album, Her Majesty.

Produced by that hidden genius of alt-folk songwriting who goes by the name of Adam Selzer, the record echoes, from the artwork onward (designed, as with all the band's albums, by Meloy's wife, Carson Ellis) its vocation to serve as a showcase of the human comedy, captured each time in its grotesque and dramatic everyday reality.

A sinister creak, like that of a ghost ship, opens the record with "Shanty For The Arethusa", inspired by the story of a legendary English frigate from the days of Admiral Nelson, carrying its own seafaring imagery into a frontier ballad worthy of Calexico. Jenny Conlee's accordion lends the compositions a rural flavour, organ and steel guitar define their contours, while the presence of a string quartet underscores the moments of heightened lyricism, at times making room for the addition of horns.

Colin Meloy's voice, while giving itself over to the glittering sense of decadence of "Los Angeles, I'm Yours", seems to take particular delight in chasing the evocative power of unusual expressions, as when he goes so far as to quote none other than an improbable "fanichiulì fanichiulà" in "Song For Myla Goldberg", dedicated to a New York writer and to the characters of her novel "Bee Season".

And so, track after track, the Gymnast and the Chimney Sweep, the Bachelor and the Bride, the Soldier and the Actor come to life—archetypal figures that seem to have stepped out of the tarot-like imagery of the Decemberists and their inspiration, perhaps at times less vibrant than on their debut album, and yet all the more carefully measured for it, modulating across multiple registers the many stories that draw a smile despite the sense of defeat and inevitability woven into them.

And while winks to the indie audience are already detectable here and there—most notably the noisy finale of "I Was Meant For The Stage"—it's really the country sincerity of the closing "As I Rise" and the overall spirit of good-humoured melancholy that confirm how naturally the Decemberists manage to blend old and new, folk storytelling and literary refinement.

Just a few months after Her Majesty, the Spanish label Acuarela released, as part of its EP series, The Tain, inspired by the pre-Christian Irish tale "Táin Bó Cúailnge", whose content and epic sense the Decemberists faithfully render in a single track of over eighteen minutes, divided into five parts and marked by a succession of narrating voices.

The Soldier, the Shrew, the Husband, the Captain, the Chorus of Wives, the Widow populate a kind of miniature musical that showcases the band's theatrical flair, suiting its narrative style perfectly—here deployed across a range of registers running from bare-bones guitar notes to driving crescendos with psych-prog leanings. The prevailing elegiac tone surfaces unevenly, revealing in the poem's fourth stanza the interpretive grace of Rachel Blumberg, and in the last a subdued, march-like gait; in the same way, the whirling succession of romanticism, subtle melancholy and lively choral energy condenses an entire rock opera into this brief EP, offering an ideal showcase for the band's style and class.

Moving at the same brisk pace as their most rollicking ballads, the Decemberists' artistic journey continues with their third album, Picaresque, in which Meloy's inspired, "literary" songwriting again sketches out bizarre and paradoxical stories, surveying with a light touch the varied humanity that populates and enriches the buoyant positivism of a narrative not quite akin to the picaresque literature evoked by the title, though it does share its epic, fanciful yet deeply ironic sensibility.

Still, the Decemberists' gradual move away from their good-humoured folk-combo dimension can already be sensed in the opening tracks of Picaresque, which at first revisit the lilting, swaying gait typical of many of the band's earlier compositions ("The Infanta"), then rework it with a heightened lyricism and more lavish arrangements that already reveal the grafting in of elements belonging as much to the singer-songwriter tradition as to the sleekest, most refined pop.

The attention to detail and arrangement, often enriched by the use of strings, outlines an unexpected pop elegance: witness "Eli, The Barrow Boy", "The Engine Driver" and above all "We Both Go Down Together", where Petra Haden's decidedly classical violin (sister of Josh, mastermind of Spain) lends a romantic quality, making it one of the album's most striking moments.

The same result isn't achieved on the more complex tracks, which do tend to swell in intensity but end up folding in on themselves in a needless dissonant whirl ("The Bagman's Gambit"), betraying a degree of creative hesitation and a narrative structure that doesn't always manage to hold the listener's attention. Indeed, a few flourishes scattered here and there in the arrangements show that the band is at its best in its original rustic, stripped-down setting rather than when it tries on a more pompous guise, which ultimately proves less convincing and less effective.

The double-vinyl edition of the album comes with Picaresquities attached, a mini-release featuring five outtakes that follow the same blueprint. Among them, worth noting is an interesting cover of Joanna Newsom's "Bridges And Balloons".

The fourth full-length chapter in the Decemberists' saga marks their move to a major label, Capitol, which released The Crane Wife at the end of 2006—a record written during the year and a half since Picaresque, a period in which Meloy also laid the groundwork for a parallel solo career, trying his hand, among other things, at covering songs by Morrissey and Shirley Collins.

The band's higher profile doesn't significantly alter its artistic coordinates, even though there's a certain awareness of the need to rethink a slightly surreal playfulness that, by this point, risked tipping into cliché.

While remaining true to form, with The Crane Wife the Decemberists embrace partly different styles and approaches, trying to balance their usual folk refinement with complex, shape-shifting constructions into which Meloy and company pour a concentrate of influences and suggestions, some of them entirely new. Perhaps precisely because of this, The Crane Wife comes across as a hybrid album, at times overstuffed, one in which you can sense the urgency of the band's effort to translate its characteristic imprint into something not yet fully defined.

The deeper meaning underlying the record might then be summed up in the nearly thirteen minutes of "The Island, Come And See, The Landlord's Daughter, You'll Not Feel The Drowning", a whirling kaleidoscope of styles split into four distinct movements: a disorienting opening steeped in sophisticated '70s rock, a narrative furrowed by heavy bass lines, an epic orchestral lift-off dusted with organ notes, a wild binge somewhere between Canterbury-style psychedelia and gypsy dance, and finally a hint of intimate singer-songwriter fare built on Latin guitar and strings.

As if such a wealth of references packed into a single track weren't enough, the rest of the album too moves effortlessly from a sunny, lively little song like "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)" to the danceable groove of "The Perfect Crime 2", from the driving rhythm of "O Valencia" to the unsettling electric whirlwind that roughs up the impetuous ballad "When The War Came".

There's no shortage, either, of airy ballads full of genuine folk lyricism, culminating in the true gem "Shankill Butchers", in which Meloy once again delights in depicting paradoxical characters, on a par with the brilliant characterisations of earlier albums. Still, the many creative elements packed into the album too often remain piled up and juxtaposed in a not-always-organic way, betraying a kind of musical gluttony that seems driven by the urge to carve out a space in a frame of reference now closer to classic pop-rock than, as in the past, to playful, choral folk.

Nearly three years on, the Decemberists partially reverse course: no longer flirting with indie-rock, but embarking on the ambitious project of a full-blown rock opera, with an imposing structure of seventeen tracks spanning an hour, in which stories and characters follow one another, along with repeated shifts in stylistic register. The Hazards Of Love faithfully follows the narrative thread as translated into music, alternating the gentle tone of soft guitar-and-double-bass melodies with pronounced rhythmic lines and rather ill-fitting electric excess.

Aided by a cast of special guests (including Robyn Hitchcock, Becky Stark and Shara Worden), the band delivers a dense, multilayered work that unwinds, on one hand, between madrigals and crooked, elegiac ballads and, on the other, shows substantial (hard!) rock leanings with a distinctly vintage flavour. The latter takes over in the story's most dramatic moments, as in the insistent electric surges and psych-tinged finale of "The Queen's Rebuke / The Crossing", which reveal unexpected kinship with Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and the most bombastic Pink Floyd.

Well-crafted as they may be, such episodes crop up all too often within an album where flashes of Meloy's brilliant songwriting can still be found, applied both to ballads of aching romanticism ("The Hazards Of Love 2", "Annan Water") and to brisk, epic fragments with guaranteed appeal (the complex "The Wanting Comes In Waves / Repaid", the irresistible single "The Rake's Song").

The dizzying succession of moments, running parallel to the unfolding of the story, lends variety to a work conceived and realised as a collective effort, but it doesn't always manage to hold the listener's attention, which is instead tested by the record's length and by the recurring grandiosity of certain vintage/heavy/progressive detours — detours that may find justification in the very concept of a rock opera, but which in the long run weigh down an otherwise enjoyable piece of writing, at least from a strictly literary standpoint, with excessive ornamentation and overly emphatic readings. Musically, though, it's now clear that the Decemberists have decided to break free from the inventive folk-rock approach of their early albums: The Hazards Of Love propels them decisively toward a new, ambitious dimension, one that nonetheless betrays signs of stylistic regression ill-suited to their contemporary attempts at recapturing an inspiration that's already running fairly thin.

After roughly five years spent chasing — with mixed and at times questionable results — a rendering of their literary folk narratives through vintage-flavoured rock grandeur, the time has come for the Decemberists too to take a look in the mirror and return to simplicity and immediacy.

It's Colin Meloy himself who voices the need for simplicity in the writing and arrangements, explaining how crafting plain, unadorned songs is no less difficult than building a complex musical epic: "as complicated as the last few records have been, this was the hardest one to make; making simple music is a real challenge, and this record is a genuine exercise in restraint."

Perhaps also to put that challenge into practice and rediscover an uncontaminated source of inspiration, the band chose to record the album in a sparser setting, in a state of creative isolation in which the ten songs that make up The King Is Dead took shape.

The album's leaner structure is matched by a newfound expressive directness, which, through themes of the cyclical nature of time and the natural world, once again shapes brisk-paced ballads and more placid, fireside tales. Meloy's vocal performances come across as further improved, taking on a broader range than his usual nasal tone, without however abandoning that pleasantly lopsided gait which once again suits so well the regained lightness of the Decemberists' little orchestra; having shed the precious but unwieldy musical-theatre costumes of their last few records, the band is back to having fun with both feet firmly on the ground, happily getting dirty with the dust of street tradition (just listen to the dancing "Rox In The Box") or with that of battles and trenches, once again recounted in "This Is Why We Fight" with the same elegiac swagger as the days of Her Majesty.

The band, however, doesn't give up steering folk back into the fold of contemporary indie-rock, going so far as to bring in R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck on three tracks, thereby pairing a reclaiming of their own past with a sonic and melodic framework that's extremely easy to take in. All in all, a welcome return to form after a long stretch of less-than-stellar inspiration.

The Decemberists aren't talking about themselves directly when, in the sarcastic intro to What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World ("The Singer Addresses His Audience"), they sing of selling out their art and betraying the trust of their audience. And yet it's hard not to draw a parallel with the recent evolution of Colin Meloy's band's career, in an age when blurring the line between real life and fiction is so fashionable (see "Birdman", "Boyhood", etc.). And it's perhaps with a certain self-irony that one should read the track's closing moment, delivered like a true, red-blooded arena-rock band.

By the time of their seventh record, What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World, the Decemberists arrived after what were, for them, at least a couple of odd albums: each one a kind of distortion of their previous work, first bombastic, then lacking in melodic inspiration.

It's with a deep sigh of relief, then, that we move on to the airy, straightforward melodies of "Cavalry Captain", with its gentle, Murdoch-esque string arrangement, and to the amorous-sexual misadventures of "Filomena", one of the record's most "picaresque" tracks. Straightforwardness and clean writing remain the record's real strength, measuring up equally well against teen pop (the instant classic "Make You Better", which revives the glories of "Transatlanticism") and against more traditional Americana (the country-noir of "Easy Come Easy Go", the old-school spiritual-blues of "Carolina Low", the country sound of "12/17/12").

The result, on one hand, is rather unpretentious: it's a collection of songs in the most literal, simplest sense of the word, songs that at times manage to recall the most thrilling tracks of their early days ("Lake Song"), but which more often settle for being merely catchy.

No great loss, though, because What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World still stands as a very solid record, whose swaggering closer ("A Beginning Song") seems to represent a genuine rebirth for the Decemberists: “I am waiting/ Should I be waiting/ I am wanting/ Should I be wanting?”.

As much as the new I'll Be Your Girl, out in early 2018, is the record where synths make their appearance, listeners will still find the traits they've always loved about the Portland collective. "Once In My Life" opens like one of their classics: little by little the classical guitar chords grow stronger and Colin Meloy's unmistakable voice intones one of his powerful laments, while the rest of the gang backs him up just as he deserves. The intensity builds, and by the time the chorus hits, there's no denying how well the synthesizer has been woven in.

Although I'll Be Your Girl was billed as the Decemberists' Depeche Mode–New Order record (leaning more towards the former than the latter), the electronic side of things doesn't overturn the band's musical canon at all, but rather accompanies and supports it in shaping some successful pop songs. "Starwatcher", on the other hand, is pure Decemberists tradition, propped up by Jenny Conlee's ever-inspired contribution on the side. "I'll Be Your Girl" bears the mark of the 2016 US presidential election: if Meloy's oddly (in a good way) cosmic pessimism may have seemed exaggerated or gratuitous before, here you know exactly who's to blame for such despondency ("Tripping Away", "Everything Is Awful", "Sucker's Prayer"), even if - as the cover art shows - the tracks are dominated by more brightness and colour. "We All Die Young", tragic in title but carefree in mood, then sets up another recurring trope in the Decemberists' output, namely the epic narrative outpouring "Rusalka-Rusalka / Wild Rushes": eight intense minutes of sirens and sailors, perfectly arranged, followed by the sweet closer "I'll Be Your Girl".

The Decemberists reach their eighth album proving they still have something good to say, often in a fresh and compelling new form.

In 2024, after six years of silence, the Decemberists feel the need to make themselves heard again, and they do so loudly and unmistakably with As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, the longest album in their discography - the equivalent of a double album if measured in vinyl. The path to follow, says frontman Colin Meloy, was that of the great double albums that made history, citing as an example "Zen Arcade" by Husker Du, where the four sides each inhabit a different musical world so that listeners can choose which one to hear depending on their mood. So there's plenty to dig into here, all well seasoned by the arsenal of instruments deployed (trumpets, trombones, flutes, banjo, steel guitar, accordions, etc.), and since quite a long time has passed since their last release, expectations for the return of Meloy and co. are high. The only thing that could temper the enthusiasm is the fear that the band may have lost the right balance between brilliant songwriting and the propulsive drive of its excellent multi-instrumentalists.

The record opens by promising almost too much lightheartedness, with the ironic opening track "Burial Ground", which drags Beach Boys-style harmonies and backing vocals among cemetery graves, and with "Oh No", with its Latin rhythm, puffing horns and tremolo guitars à la Calexico, invited to an Emir Kusturica-style wedding. Thankfully the mood shifts with "Long White Veil", where banjo and slide guitar unveil a tale of marital grief.

The middle section is lit up by the record's most touching moments: "The Black Maria" has the aching gait of The National, and with a solemn layer of horns it conjures the spectre of judicial injustice (the Black Maria being the vehicle used to carry convicts off to prison). "All I Want Is You" is a great love song, played out between subtle irony and quiet protest.

After the heavy political commitment of recent years spent backing the Democrats, which produced songs like "Sixteen Military Wives" and "Severed", on "As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again" the Portland band goes through a period of disenchantment and disillusionment, expressed in another high point of the record: "America Made Me", a shimmering sixties-style crescendo driven by Jenny Conlee's piano, backing an invective against the motherland, from which all that's asked is a little help getting back to sleep. And when the big themes are in short supply, the search for empathy within dissatisfaction takes centre stage instead, as in the elegant melancholy of the midtempo ballad "Tell Me What's on Your Mind".

"Joan In The Garden" takes up an entire side of the hypothetical double album, is the longest track the Decemberists have ever recorded, and is the real novelty of this latest release. It's an all-in gamble in which the band shows off every one of its skills. Across its 19 minutes you get the acoustic ballad, the Floyd-style crescendo, the noisy suspended passage (a touch too long at 6 minutes) and the return, complete with a heavy-riffing charge, to seal the story of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans plucked straight off the stake and onto the pen of Colin Meloy, the reserved singer-songwriter born for the stage - although here it's mainly the band taking centre stage, dispelling any doubt about its essential centrality to the Decemberists' sound.

If the previous I'll Be Your Girl had looked to digital sounds for a new direction, here it's the running times that push the band out of their comfort zone. Indeed, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again doesn't present itself as a turning-point record, something also confirmed by the return of longtime producer Tucker Martine (Mudhoney, Neko Case, My Morning Jacket). After all, the title itself ("As it ever was, so it will be again") already confirms this attitude.

On As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, not every song carries the same intensity, and the first half is a little weaker, but the great news is that the Decemberists' rattling old carriage is back on the road, and its world full of cemeteries, broken hearts, corpse brides, flights through the woods and burning Joans of Arc is once again ready to welcome you in. Whether to hop aboard or not is entirely up to you.

Contributions by Gabriele Benzing ("Her Majesty"), Lorenzo Righetto ("What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World"), Alessio Belli ("I'll Be Your Girl"), Lorenzo Montefreddo ("As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again")

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