So let’s tackle The Decemberists. I’ll get it out of the way ahead of time: I like the Decemberists. I’m not rabid or even super passionate about them, but I like what they do. Their turn-of-the-century period drama meets art-rock as played by medieval troubadours speaks to something in me; perhaps the fact that I am a nerd, and The Decemberists make fabulous nerd music, plumped with purple prose, goosed with horns and dulcimers and all sorts of weird howdyado.
They’d later evolve (devolve? you decide) into a decidedly streamlined folk-pop-rock act, with all the literary ephemera turned back to like an 8. Still, Picaresque is the finest example of the Decemberists being, for lack of a better word, super-Decemberistsy. It’s verbose and (annoyingly, to lots of people that aren’t me) well-read and extra pompous. If all of this served to entice you rather than deter you, you are The Decemberists’ target audience and should enjoy Picaresque as such.
Lead Decemberist Colin Meloy knows his way around a hook and (clearly) a thesaurus. His tight little pop songs are often insidiously catchy, while still tossing about his multisyllabic, sometimes arcane vocabulary (see “16 Military Wives”, “The Sporting Life”); his headier, more literary numbers are simply epic — in the Homeric sense of the word, not in the way we abuse the word when something is simply large and/or cool (“dude, I just ate an epic breakfast burrito”). Picaresque‘s particular charm lies in Meloy’s ability to harness both sides of the divide; here, the tighter, catchier numbers alternate with long, winding bits of historical fiction. A nine-minute song about revenge and murder between sailors in the belly of a whale is at its most palatable when it’s the exception and not the rule.
So here, Meloy’s winding, literary epics are dispersed sparingly — notably, “The Bagman’s Gambit” in the first half and “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” in the second, but a few tunes track the five-minute mark — amongst some pretty tight pop nuggets. “We Both Go Down Together” plays like a dark torch song (with a fabulous hook); “The Sporting Life” swings like Motown over the same bass rhythm Okkervil River nicked for “Lost Coastlines”; “16 Military Wives” is pointed, satirical, with ebullient horns and Meloy’s idiosyncratic sermonizing reaching an apex. The ominous, galloping opener “The Infanta” is a good representation, in fact, of what much of Picaresque has in store; heady and somewhat theatrical, but innately catchy and digestible.
And while the sparse “The Bagman’s Gambit” is itself a fine example of Meloy’s prowess at epic narrative poetry, Picaresque‘s most sublime illustration of this brand of Decemberists song is handily “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”. The aforementioned tale of mariners in the belly of a whale is an absolute corker for every last one of its nine minutes, a Nick Cave-esque murder ballad delivered via a wobbly, ghostly sea shanty, all acoustic guitars and spectral vocals and woozy accordion and fire-eyed invective. It’s a beautiful, haunting, captivating piece of work, and might merit Picaresque‘s inclusion on the list all by itself.
Fortunately, it doesn’t need to. Meloy and company are firing on all cylinders with Picaresque, a sprawling and ambitious pop record assembled by theater nerds and reclusive poets.
Playlist track: As I imagine “Mariner’s Revenge Song” wouldn’t play well at parties, I’ll defer to “We Both Go Down Together”, which narrowly bests “16 Military Wives” on the strength of the strings that swell up as the chorus comes in.
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