Customer Reviews

Her Majesty-the Decemberists [Vinyl]

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

On paper the Decemberists sound just ghastly: grad students play dress up, check into the Neutral Milk Hotel, and play the Chuck Dickens/Pirate Jenny songbook as sung by Rufus Wainwright imitating Neil Young.

Yet it was love at first accordion wheeze when I encountered them as an opening act. On stage, they're the sweet American cousins of the Mekons and the Go-Betweens, radiating intelligence and shades of dark anarchy in everything they do. I got 2002's excellent Castaways & Cutouts at the merch table that night and immediately fell in love with the haunting (literally) opening track "Leslie Ann Levine," a lament from a dead girl's point-of-view.

Specters from the past are the key to Her Majesty the Decemberists. Songwriter Colin Meloy looks through their eyes to shed light on the darkness of our age. The conceit confuses at first: what are whalebone corsets, radios, telephones and pantaloons doing in the same song? Is that '70s wah-wah guitar and crunchy electric piano I hear amid sea chanteys and old country reels? The Decemberists' Victorian mirror provides a tantalizing, innocent and often deceiving distance to songs about sexual slumming ("Shanty for the Arethusa"), voyeurism and Onanism ("Billy Liar"), emotional sadism ("The Bachelor and the Bride"), the homoerotic thrill of warmongering - just ask Bush and Blair - ("The Soldiering Life"); and a love song to that ultimate city as strumpet, L.A. ("Los Angeles, I'm Yours").

That last song is the album's real standout. Strumming Elton John's Bennie and the Jets vamp on his guitar, Meloy's 18th century busker stands as an evangelical emissary on the corner of Sunset and Vine who blushes as girls with bare midriffs and boys with jeans nearly to their knees slouch on by. ("I can see your undies!" he intones, hilariously.) As a classic sunny West Coast pop arrangement builds and swells around him (think Stevie Wonder meets Richard Carpenter), Meloy summons cherubs and seraphim to help him dispel the stink of burnt cocaine and rotting morals before crying out ecstatically to the city as whore who both attracts and repels him, "Los Angeles, my love!", as if loving her might save her. If you've ever spent time actively engaged with the City of Lost Angels, this song will wrench your heart.

I like a band that doesn't seem to be trying to be anything except whatever the hell they are. This is the opposite of, say, Wilco, a fine, talented bunch of people who never tire of showing us all the sounds they can ape perfectly. It's so very very good, but so what?

Colin Meloy is an original, with a confident, goofy voice. He sings his sad, slightly mean, theatrical songs with no apologies. And why should he apologize? The best stuff gets better the more you listen. On one pass, it was just interesting enough to get a second... on the second, hmmm, there's some interesting stuff here... next thing I knew, it was living in the car player, with each listen convincing me of the brilliance of another song.

If you like to be beaten over the head, forget about the Decemberists. But if you're willing to give effort to material that rewards it, check it out.

I'm not sure if I understand why everyone (reviewers, listeners, etc.) insists on comparing the Decemeberists with Neutral Milk Hotel. Short of blatantly derivative/plaigaristic music, there is absolutely no reason to fault an album for sharing a few superficial characteristics with another album. Yes, both Colin Meloy and Jeff Magnum are highly literate songwriters that don't write love songs and sing with a British affectation, but other than that there is really no basis to any of the absurdly scathing reviews that denounce the brilliant "Her Majesty the Decemberists" as unoriginal.
That rant aside, you, the reader, should definitely buy this album. Breaking free of many existing pop cliches, the Decemberists choose to write songs about Victorian-era characters backed by skillful instrumentation. The keyboardist/accordianist Jenny Conlee is a standout, and her virtuosity never fails to please, while the bassist and drummer (Nate Query and Rachel Blumberg, respectively) do solid jobs with the rhythm work. The real standout, though, is Colin Meloy, whose songwriting provides the album its atmospheric core. "Los Angeles, I'm Yours" is a brilliantly veiled ode/tirade to its titular city, with a strong guitar backbone, while the hauntingly beautiful "The Gymnast, High Above the Ground" is simply one of the best songs I've heard in years. And while "Song For the Myla Goldberg" drowns in its own literary cleverness, lost in an uninteresting melody, the rest of the album is so wonderful that it doesn't even matter.
And yes, I do like Neutral Milk Hotel, but I am also capable of liking other bands, even if their lead singers sound vaguely similar.

With the turn of the century everything old is new again, with bands like The Killers, Bloc Party, Interpol, and Fall Out Boy embracing their 80s roots and improving upon them, there is a lot of terrific music out there. But nothing compares to The Decemberists.

The melodic, fully developed sound is mixed with lyrics that embrace your inner English major -- this band has it all. They use an accordion, for crying out loud! I chose to write regarding this album, which contains one of my favorites 'The Bachelor and The Bride,' but really all of their albums are exceptional.

There is no way for me to recommend this band enough. If I could go door to door hawking their albums like an English 19th century milkmaid, I would. But here's good too.

If I was trapped in an elevator this music would keep me sane at least until my ipod died.

Invest some time in The Decemberists, they are worth getting to know.

Aren't we all but the sums of our influences? Not listening to these guys because Neutral Milk Hotel "already did it" is stupid. You might as well not listen to Willie Nelson because Johnny Cash "already did it."

Make it a draw and buy this album AND Neutral Milk Hotel. Listen to them both and be amazed.

I'll confess to having been a little trepidatious in giving HER MAJESTY a spin. After having heard the glorious success of CASTAWAYS AND CUTOUTS, this second Decemberists' disc seemed ripe for a sophomore jinx. And after listening to the lead track, the almost willfully obtuse "Shanty for the Arethusa," I was not encouraged.

Thankfully, "Shanty" did not prove to be a representative sample of HER MAJESTY's quality. The Portland (yay!) band's charm and talent came through convincingly on the majority of this album's material, though it's also true that this is a project that did not immediately seduce me as the band's earlier work did. But working a little to appreciate less accessible material is hardly daunting when the band is this talented. The listener knows that there is going to be a payoff; I guess that's a magical little bond called "trust" which the Decemberists' have now earned from me.

For pop music fans who read Dickens, or enjoy exotic shanty tunes with prominent accordion and organ parts... or for those of you who can enjoy a wry and lovely ode to a lover's ankle, HER MAJESTY is for you.

The Decemberists: Her Majesty, the Decemberists(kill rock stars).
At first blush, it appears that the last thing on the mind of Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy is romance. He makes no grand declarations of love for a beloved, after all, in any of the songs on the band's latest release Her Majesty, the Decemberists (nor were there any on the previous release, the superb Castaways & Cutouts). He doesn't pine away for a beauty who has forsaken him, nor does he idealize an unknown girl on the subway (although in Decemberists parlance, the latter would more likely be in a carriage). What you will find are engaging tales of 19th century prostitutes and tattered orphans earning their keeps as chimney sweeps, among other things, along the way littered with words like "urchin," "bowery," and "whalebone corset frame." In short, what Meloy's songwriting lacks in romance, it more than makes up for in Romance (the band takes its name from a rebel group that attempted to overthrow the Russian czar in 1825)-and this is in part what sets the Decemberists apart from the vast majority of bands working today.

"There's a wrinkle in the water/ Where we laid our first daughter/ And I think the wind blows sweetly there/ Over there..." imparts Meloy on "The Bachelor & the Bride," in his slightly nasal croon. It's as if his voice were made for telling such macabre tales. Elsewhere he slices off (and this seems to be the best way to describe it) words like "pantaloons" and "marmalade" and renders them delicious where others might stumble with such dense polysyllabic material. Even in more light-hearted moments, as on the Brit-flavored "Billy Liar," it is Meloy's phrasing that makes the song, finding two syllables where only one exists ("Can we stay hee-er/ For a while dee-er...").

In addition to the Romantic-era subject matter, Her Majesty... also represents a branching out of sorts for the band. "Los Angeles, I'm Yours," is the unlikely title for an anti-ode to modern day L.A. (and what other kind of ode to that subject could there be?). Like some bizzaro Randy Newman, Meloy good-naturedly skips through the tune, over appropriately schmaltzy strings and harmonica: "How I abhor this place!/ Its sweet and bitter taste/ Has left me wretched, wretching on all fours/ Los Angeles, I'm yours."

Elsewhere, if we can assume an autobiographical perspective, Meloy gets as personal as he has yet. "I Was Meant for the Stage," is on one level a sort of open apology to parents who were hopeful that their son do something at which he could making a living. On another level, it's a grand conceit bringing to mind the Smiths' "Rubber Ring," as Meloy declares loud and clear to his audience, "And as the spotlights fade away/ And you're escorted through the foyer/ You will resume your callow ways/ But I was meant for the stage." Witnessed live, the song and its performance take on something of an ironic, self-mocking tone that seems confirmed by the extended musical cacophony it eventually drizzles into. The sentiment is nothing if not endearing.

In sound and spirit, the Decemberists draw obvious comparisons to the likes of the Smiths and Neutral Milk Hotel, two bands different in sound, time and place that were vastly important in their respective eras. One might say that there was something that felt... "special" about those bands, and their legacies can attest to that. While they're only a couple of albums into it, the Decemberists seem destined for such lore.

Czars beware: the Decemberists live!
9.2 out of 10

I recently forced myself to sit down and confront a stack of several dozen rock records that had piled up over the last couple of years, and bang out a few snappy reviews so that I wouldn't feel lame about not listening to any of them, and feeling so out of touch with the hip, happening hits of today.

This was by far the most distinctive and entertaining album of the lot: a keeper, for sure. Heck, I may even have to go back and buy copies of their earlier albums, just so I can get caught up. This Portland-based band fits snugly into the style of self-mocking pretentiousness previously mined by bands such as Belle & Sebastian, producing charming sets of lofty pseudo-literary lyrics, captivating vignettes that wow the rubes as well as other indie types (myself included) who search for songs with a little more meat on their stanzas than your standard-issue pop-rock love song or all those insufferably introverted art-rock/lo-fi toss-offs. (And if you think *that* was an impenetrable run-on sentence, you ain't seen nothin' yet: the Decemberists are one of those bands who cause hipoisie 'zine reviewers to go into orgiastic, gyrating backflips of dense, self-referential, overly florid prose. Everybody wants to sound as smart and as clever as their favorite band; very few of them seem able to describe the who-what-where-when-why in anything close to a straightforward manner...)

Anyway, the good news is that the Decemberists live up to all their hipster hype -- this is an album that can hold your attention through several auditions (though you may have to put it away for a while, to avoid burning out on it). The band shamelessly flaunts its love of soft-pop melodies (most memorably on the dark, hummable "Los Angeles, I'm Yours") and songwriter Colin Meloy proves an engaging lyricist, more capable and direct than Belle & Sebastian's much vaunted Stuart Murdoch, and closer in spirit to fellow fans of wordplay such as Stephin Merritt and Elvis Costello, or even Noel Coward or the guys from Squeeze. He's funny, arch and inventive, gleefully over the top but not so oblique that his songs make no sense. The songs are well-crafted, but not stuffy or overly serious -- you can have fun listening to this record, and yet not feel that there's no "there" there, that it's not just some wanky little indie album. Recommended!

Building upon their momentum from their first release, "Castaways & Cutouts", The Decemberists create a masterpiece with "Her Majesty The Decembrists" (There's a spelling mistake in the amazon.com title - it's not a typo on my part). The album starts off with "Shanty for the Arethusa", a song that's epic in nature and graceful in its performance. Other songs that stand out on the CD are "Los Angeles I'm Yours", "I Was Meant for the Stage", "The Bachelor and the Bride", and "The Chimbley Sweep". Colin Meloy delivers intersting song reminiscent of, but in no way related to, Jeff Magnum's work with Neutral Milk Hotel. All in all, Meloy's vocals are more interesting and more epic in nature than Magnum's and I must say that I prefer the Decemberists over Neutral Milk Hotel. Additionally, many people believe The Decemberists are trying to create a type of poppy folk music. The band definitely appears to be leaning in that direction, but unlike most other pop music, the Decemberists create smart and powerful songs instead of catchy and superficial beats.
If you're looking for music to groove to, you've come to the wrong place; but if you're looking for well written and performed song with complex lyrics and dazzling melodies, then Her Majesty The Decembrists is the CD for you.

Ah, to soar with the whirlwind love affair that is a Decemberists album... it's certainly something else. Indie to the last accordion, Colin Meloy and his motley band of maudlin musicians set out to top their phenomenal CASTAWAYS AND CUTOUTS - without success, I'm afraid, but that doesn't mean that this isn't worth a listen every bit as much as its predecessor is, because it is! This album marks the milestone of that nail-biter that is the sophomore record - will it slump? Impale itself on the swords of music critics everywhere, wither away and die in the back of the CD racks at Sam Goody? Or will it shine? Actually, HER MAJESTY is my beacon at sea.

Mellow acoustics, accordions, keyboards, and even the occasional trumpet are embroidered into the eleven songs you see here, with the sturdy spine of drums that keep the musical body standing straight up. Nothing new here, really. Meloy still dazzles in storytelling and words that sixty percent of America's population will never use in their lifetime, but that's the roguish charm of it all. And he's getting better at his craft, evolving with his bandmates at a comfortable and exciting pace: the rat-a-tat drumbeat of "Song For Myla Goldberg," the head-bobbing, insanely catchy "Billy Liar," the almost country-ish, drawling "As I Rise."

There's just something about HER MAJESTY that doesn't quite measure up to the last one - I couldn't tell you what, because everything the Decemberists have put out generally sounds the same (that's not to say they don't try something different every now and then, however); the lyrics and music retain the same friendly companionship that makes this band an easy and absorbing listen, the same instruments are used... but I would consider this as your second outing if you have just delved into the world of the Decemberists. CASTAWAYS AND CUTOUTS remains untouched and perhaps unable to be topped as well - and heck, let's keep it that way. Don't judge, just listen. Your ears will thank you for it.