Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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85 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thrill Specter, October 28, 2003
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.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
best band ever., October 2, 2005
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.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Something different, ferchrissakes!, December 18, 2004
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.
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