Album from 2003
Since I've already passed most of their albums, and I'm sitting here waiting for their newest to come in the mail today, I bought "Her Majesty the Decemberists" by the Decemberists from 2003 and decided to write about it. It's probably the Decemberist album I'm least familiar with, which I think works perfectly. I don't already know the songs too well to the point where I'm biased by how well they've stuck in my head, but I've heard them at least once before, and I know the artists well enough to still write about the music.
Also, apparently "Welcome Interstate Managers" by Fountains of Wayne has never been released on anything but CD.
I came to the band through "The Hazards of Love" in 2009 and quickly made my way through their catalog, with "The Crane Wife" and "Picaresque" turning me into a true fan of the band rather than the acquaintance that "Hazards" had made me. Colin Meloy, the bands frontman, is a literary and bookish writer who is among the greatest musicians to emerge in the 2000s. But somehow, I didn't quite follow through. Yes, I own and have listened to "Her Majesty" and their 2002 debut "Castaways and Cutouts," but somehow never listened to them enough to really let the songs sink in, or at least not as much as I'd listened to the other three. Eventually, 2011 brought "The King is Dead" which blew me away, and I stopped looking backwards and now I'm sitting here waiting for "What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World" like an idiot...
(By the way, I'm not kidding. I'm actually sitting in my house waiting for the album to arrive in the mail. I just saw the mailman go by my house but he was on the other side of the street. Now I have no idea where he is. Also, I don't know if it'll come in the actual mail or like UPS or something. But it's supposed to be here today.)
...who doesn't even know the bands origins. So, I guess the mailman can take his time, because I've already got "Her Majesty the Decemberists" on vinyl and plenty of getting-to-know-you time to sort out.
You can really hear the foundations of this band here in some of these songs. The Irish-ness, or even European-ness (I know they're American), the simultaneous and conflicting modernity of Colin's voice and sentiments combined with an often old-fashioned sound, like something that could have been a hit when the Temptations were a thing.
It's the jauntiness and the mischief of "Billy Liar" and "Los Angeles, I'm Yours" that make me mention Ireland, the Dickensianly villainous tune of "The Chimbley Sweep" that makes me think European, and the classic sound of songs like "Song for Myla Goldberg" and "The Soldiering Life" that make me think of the 60s.
Of course, this album is much more than a prelude, or a hidden gem that points to things to come. This album is genuine Decemberists music, which means that it's really fuckin' good.
I think that "Los Angeles, I'm Yours" is one of their best rock songs, one of their accessible and easily remembered songs, right up their with songs like "Legionnaire's Lament," "We Both Go Down Together," "O Valencia!" and almost all of "The King is Dead." But I also think that "The Gymnast, High Above the Ground" is one of the most beautiful songs the band has ever produced. It's a gorgeous marriage of form and content. It's a song (on the surface, at least) about a gymnast, a flexible, graceful person high up in the air, accompanied by light, airy, graceful, but still moving guitar picking. And just as one watching a gymnast from the ground would be full of almost anxious anticipation, that builds up the further the acrobat goes through her act, the song builds and builds, introducing a steady drumbeat about a minute and a half in. The song moves on from its initial metaphor to some sort of tragic car crash, but it's the beauty in this beginning that really draws me in, and that really elevates the song for me.
The other lengthy song ("The Gymnast, High Above the Ground" clocks in at 7:13), is another staggering piece, one that also starts low and builds high. But "I Was Meant for the Stage" doesn't build anticipation like "Gymnast." It starts out slow and wistful, with the narrator, whether it's Colin singing about being a rock star or an actor singing about the theater, telling us that his life was destined to be a theatrical one. Of course, theater acting is much less delicate and more blown out, and so the song blows itself out, growing louder and louder, adding more and more sounds, until around 4 and a half minutes when it climaxes in an instrumental crescendo that eventually flies too close to the sun and twists itself into a mess of noise.
But my favorite is "Red Right Ankle." My best piece of advice is to listen to it. The first verse begins with something simple, something physical, and real. How things are made up of many little things, with muscles and bones and sinews and skin all coming together just to make an ankle.
"This is the story of your red right ankle
And how it came to meet your leg
And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled
And how the skin was softly shed."
And you need all of this to have a limb. You need all of this, no matter how well it works together, to make an ankle, and an ankle to make a limb. Everything is part of something larger.
"And how it whispered,
Oh adhere to me
For we are bound by symmetry
And whatever differences our lives have been
We together make a limb.
This is the story of your red right ankle."
He then moves on, following the same structure, to the story of something else, something where you (or she) are (or is) a part of something larger in your (or her) own life. Here it's about lineage and connection, even if its something that you'll never know, but are still connected to.
"This is the story of your gypsy uncle
You never knew 'cause he was dead
And how his face was carved and rift with wrinkles
In the picture in your head.
And remember how you found the key
To his hideout in the Pyrenees
But you wanted to keep his secret safe
So you threw the key away.
This is the story of your gypsy uncle."
And of course, the final application of this structure brings things to love, and in a full circle. People are connected by love, and the people who love them and the people they've loved. And they burrow deep inside of us, where the bones and muscles tangle.
"This is the story of the boys who loved you
Who love you now and loved you then
And some were sweet, and some were cold and snuffed you
And some just laid around in bed.
Some had crumbled you straight to your knees
Did it cruel, did it tenderly
Some had crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart
This is the story of the boys who loved you
This is the story of your red right ankle."
There's more, even. In addition to the songs already mentioned, listen to "The Soldiering Life" for a nice bit of brotherhood and homoeroticism, or "The Bachelor and the Bride" for an endlessly listenable chorus. Together, they may not be the best Decemberists album, but I'm sure they're somebody's favorite. Not necessarily mine, at least for now, but it easily fits into their catalog in the backwards way that I came to it. I don't think it reaches the all-around solidness of "The King is Dead," the ambition of "The Hazards of Love," or the highs of "The Crane Wife," but I still am really loving it.
By the way, the mail came, and the album wasn't in it. Then a FedEx truck came and dropped something off, and it wasn't the album either. I guess I'll start listening to "Castaways and Cutouts."
52 in 52: Introduction
Last Week's: Wilco's "A Ghost is Born"
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