THE DECEMBERISTS As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again
8/10 Intellectual Oregonians cram two decades of tricks into four-sided ninth LP.
YABB/THIRTY TIGERS
Tucker Martine and The Decembrists
Recorded at: Flora Recording and Playback, Portland, Oregon
Personnel: Colin Meloy (lead vocals, guitars), Chris Funk (electric guitars, pedal steel, synthesisers, banjo, mandolin), Jenny Conlee (piano, organs, vibraphone, accordion, synthesisers), Nate Query (electric and upright basses), John Moen (drums, percussion), Elizabeth Ellison (backing vocals), James Mercer (backing vocals on “Burial Ground”), Mike Mills (backing vocals, piano on “Joan In The Garden”), Kelly Pratt (trumpet, flugelhorn, euphonium, tuba, saxophones, French horn, trombone), Jesse Chandler (flute and bass clarinet on “The Reapers”), Miguel Bernal, Reinhardt Wolfgang Melz (percussion on “Oh No”)
Garden”, inspired by artistic and literary depictions of Joan of Arc’s hallucinatory visitations. It’s the longest song The Decemberists have recorded: 2004’s “The Tain” only managed 18 and a half.
Roughly sequenced as four sonic “islands”, it’s an album that, when experienced as intended, takes the listener on an emotive journey: through whimsical to maudlin, tender and jocular and just plain weird. The band sound like a group of long-term collaborators cutting loose and having fun: Funk’s jangly guitar and Moen’s dancing drums combining with giddy backing vocals from James Mercer of The Shins to turn the ending of “Burial Ground” into a darkly humorous punchline; layers of additional brass and percussion giving “Oh No!” the cadence of a night at the circus. “The Reapers” sneaks in a reference to a character “born in a brothel”, like a tip of the hat to early deep cut “My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist”. “William Fitzwilliam”, described by Meloy as a “pandemic fever dream” written while immersed in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, is a tender character study that plays out like a sea shanty ghost-written by John Prine.
Shepherding them through all this detail is long-time co-producer Tucker Martine, who has worked on almost every Decemberists album since The Crane Wife. Aer the band abandoned an earlier attempt at self-production, Meloy and Martine reunited to e ectively reverse-engineer the songs, stripping the best of an excess of material back to vocal-guitar demos and sketching in where the other parts might t.
That approach, one of careful curation, extended even to the 19-minute album closer, despite its freewheeling feel. “Joan In The Garden” misdirects by taking what initially sounds like the ri from “Passenger Side” by Wilco and spinning it, stretching it and layering it with butchered vocal samples, funereal chimes, Query’s black metal bassline and ethereal backing “hosannah”s from REM’S Mike Mills. Bonkers, brilliant and completely without precedent, it’s The Decemberists themselves in miniature.