Review: The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love (2009)

It's funny how quickly a judgment can be turned on its head. After 2006's The Crane Wife, I had all but dismissed The Decemberists as overdone (especially lyrically) and overhyped. But with the release of The Hazards of Love (Capitol), which is even more over the top conceptually than the Japanese-folk-inspired Crane, Colin Meloy has managed to establish himself as a modern day librettist and composer of the highest degree. What seemed campy and forced about Crane seems meticulously executed and nothing short of one of the more pleasantly unique indie albums to come out in years in Hazards.

If I were to break down the plot of the album, which is a narrative that listens as a string of chapters much better than it does as individual songs, you would either be intrigued at the prospect of an album about a Narnia-esque woodland universe or irritated by the pretentiousness of such decadence. The album is, without a doubt, an exercise in self-indulgence by Meloy. Who else could meld a virtuous and innocent maiden, a shape-shifting fawn, an evil rake, a forest queen, and a baffling vocabulary, but someone serving a very particular and personal artistic desire? Meloy's perceived failure on Crane is his utter success on Hazards. He engages the listener so immediately and so emotionally that it almost doesn't matter how fantastical or absurd his plot. An infanticidal rake? Sure, I'll buy it! Oh, you want to call the forest a taiga for seventeen songs? That's OK, too!

There aren't many lyricists out there that can sell such intense abstraction to such a wide audience, but much like the Japanese folk inspiration for Crane, Meloy stuck to his guns and built lyrics around the 1960s British folk revival (the album’s title comes from a 1964 Anne Briggs EP). The parallels between the critically acclaimed 2006 album (not by this critic, but apparently there are other opinions out there) and its 2009 follow-up are many and obvious. In The Crane Wife Meloy used two musical themes and built them up all through the album to convey the various moods that act as themes throughout. In The Hazards of Love, Meloy has chosen another two of these motifs to define moods throughout the album. There is the "love" theme, featured on each of the four tracks entitled "The Hazards of Love," which varies both in tempo and dynamic intensity across all four of its incarnations. The "lust" theme on "The Wanting Comes in Waves" (parts 1 and 2) is interwoven with the march of the domineering taiga queen (also the narrator's mother), a Led Zeppelin riff that reeks of Darth Vader’s “Imperial March”. The lustiness of the narrator’s theme and the anger of his mother’s meld brilliantly to convey a dangerous amalgam of tension and rage and want.

In opera, musical themes are called leitmotifs, and they often divide the heroes from villains, the victories from the defeats. On Hazards, Meloy harkens back to this classic composing technique by combining leitmotifs with his operatically overly dramatized librettos. Meloy’s inventive method on Hazards appears to be a historically significant one. Few artists have taken such distinctively bold and obvious historical influences and turned out such successfully adapted music. Meloy’s loyalty to the operatic style of composition and lyricism is surprisingly successful not because it is simply carried out, but because it has been adapted in a way that makes The Decemberist’s evolving music accessible to the listener rather than pretentious or exclusive. As he is one of the few artists to even attempt, let alone accomplish this feat (Mastodon’s latest Crack the Skye attempts the same, with questionable results), Meloy should be lauded for his novelty as well as his increasingly obvious virtuosity as a composer.

After listening to The Hazards of Love dozens of times this month, I went back and gave The Crane Wife another shot. I was surprised to find that the things that had turned me off three years ago – a pompously dramatic vocabulary, strangely connected musical lines, and unrelenting emotionality – were the same things that drew me into Hazards and allowed me to reassess and appreciate Crane. If The Hazards of Love is the endgame, The Crane Wife was a necessary and appropriate stepping stone, though it is much harder to appreciate the latter without the former. If, however, Hazards is yet another stepping stone for The Decemberists, I am intrigued to discover where the next leap will take them.

Best Albums of 2008 (A Retrospective)

As a music semi-journalist, there's a clause in the contract with myself that says I am required to write a "best of" blog for the Albums of 2008. This year was a rather unique one for music. The indie scene took several very separate but intertwining paths, namely into electronica and dance music (Goldfrapp, Jamie Lidell, Animal Collective, Of Montreal), Afro-Baroque-pop (Vampire Weekend), gospel-rock (Fleet Foxes), and a conglomeration of the three (TV on the Radio). Of course, the ever burgeoning singer-songwriters (Mountain Goats, Conor Oberst) have been around for decades, and even Bob Dylan joined the fray (but, thankfully, he didn't join The Fray -- har har har) and released a much acclaimed bootleg album of rare material (Tell Tale Signs).

Of particular note in 2008 was the incredibly unique instrumentation that has begun to shine through in popular music (popular by my standards, not by records sold or money made touring). TV On The Radio used an entire marching band, Vampire Weekend thrived on their strings section, and Fleet Foxes soared to new vocal heights with five part harmonies. So, without further ado, I present to you, retrospectively, in descending order, my list of the Top 5 Albums of 2008.

5. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Fewer bands were a lightning rod for such disagreement in 2008. Vampire Weekend plays ivy-league music that is borderline exclusive, filled to the brim with Baroque strings and harpsichords and afrobeaets all jumbled and pounding together. The instrumental and stylistic combinations, on one hand, are detrimental to the band by serving as ploys delivered simply for the sake of novelty. However, those same combinations create the distinctive "Baroque-pop" sound that makes Vampire Weekend so interesting to listen to. The results are undeniably entertaining, though unbearably pretentious to some. Most importantly, Vampire Weekend's breakthrough debut album gives hope to millions of aspiring young musicians that playing house parties and building your own buzz is well worth it. Love it or hate it, VW will have you moving and singing with boundless positive energy (even if the lyrics do reference Louis Vuitton or Peter Gabriel).

4. The Fireman - Electric Arguments
After his outstanding 2005 album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard was followed up by the commercially monumental (but critically mediocre) Memory Almost Full in 2007, I had almost lost hope that Paul McCartney, now in his 60s, was still able to create the great music of his youth. Though Electric Arguments was released late in 2008 as an alter-ego collaboration with producer Youth, it is a McCartney album through and through. Songs about love and quintessential McCartneyan sentimentality abound, but that does not stop the production from keeping songs like "Two Magpies" from becoming just another "Blackbird." The same goes for the album's opening track, "Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight," which reeks of "Helter Skelter," but manages to obscure Sir Paul's familiar vocals by pushing them to the very edge of their ever-lowering range. It's not fair to expect McCartney to match his earliest and best work (see: "Yesterday"), but this effort is his best in years, and it reminds us that half a lifetime ago, this man was a part of the greatest band in history.

3. The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride
Is it arrogant to reference myself? Or just plain lazy? Either way -- this says it all. After seeing John Darnielle perform the songs from this album, any criticisms that I had of his repeating rhythmic theme have been overcome. I was convinced not only by his incisive lyrics, but more importantly by the purpose that the rhythmic theme plays in managing to subtly connect each of the songs to which it is applied. Those songs are clearly the most important on the album, and though they are manically dissimilar in lyrical theme, the thumping repetitious rhythms manage to tie them all together. My very own April 2008 review says it best: "Most songs after the first are rhythmically identical to the ones before it. If Darnielle did this intentionally, a rhythmic theme is a stroke of genius." I was so right.

2. TV On The Radio - Dear Science,
I probably would have named Dear Science, my album of the year had I not read the Spin interview in which lead singer Tunde Adebimpe declares that, while he appreciates all of the praise that the band's fourth album has gotten (which is about as much as their 2006 classic Return to Cookie Mountain got), he is fairly certain that most reviewers just got lazy and started copying each other. I didn't want to look like a plagiarist, but this album is all I can listen to lately. The tunes vary so widely, from gospel to hip-hop/R&B to soul to funk, that each listen feels like a complete musical trip. The album's highlight has to be "Golden Age," whose intensely uplifting theme is in sharp contrast to most of the material on both Science and Cookie Mtn., which are often riddled with a deep dark bass that underlies very busy arrangements and satirical lyrics. One of my most treasured answers to the question "What type of music do you listen to?" is "If I can listen to an album twenty times, and still hear new things each time, I'll keep listening." This album is the epitome of a synergistic, evolving sound that is just as surprisingly diverse and explosive on the twentieth listen as it was on the first.

1. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
As if from another planet, Fleet Foxes arose from the burgeoning Northwestern US indie scene like so many Douglas-firs. Never in recent memory has a band debuted to as much acclaim and excitement as Fleet Foxes did in 2008. From the first notes of their Sun King EP to the closing of "Oliver James" on Fleet Foxes LP, a palpable magical quality seemed to engulf both band and listener. The melodies and harmonies are incredibly unique and, most impressively, organic. It is pleasantly clear that lead singer Robin Pecknold and co. feel out every note, and even the imperfections add to the earthiness that so deifies their singing. The album is all at once new and old, drawing on Renaissance flutes and chants as well as electric guitars. Each trip through the album brings new sights and sounds, and it plays out like a great movie that utterly involves the audience. Getting lost in this album was one of the best parts of 2008, and it is for that reason that it is my Album of the Year. It was a year filled with struggle and fear and cynicism from all sides, but also one filled with optimism in the prospect of a better and changed year ahead. Fleet Foxes captured that flourishing optimism, while still acknowledging and overcoming the negatives that preceded it.

A 'Prospekt's March' Straight to Hell

I have made it abundantly clear how much I admire, respect, and enjoy the music of Coldplay and hyperpretentious frontman, Chris Martin. That was, I did until November 21, 2008 when Prospekt's March, the accompanying EP to June's masterful Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, was released. This was, coincidentally, just in time for Christmas shoppers the world over to gobble it up like so many Coldplay-hungry termites. Had they heard the drivel that is embodied in every second of the EP, however, they may have gone with the new Britney Spears disc instead.

Prospekt is nothing short of a Capitalistic farce, created for the holiday season as a means to package VLVODAAHF with the "bonus edition" stamp. Unlike the latter In Rainbows disc from Radiohead's 2007 collection, which greatly added to the original short release, Prospekt makes a complete and utter mockery of everything that Coldplay achieved on Viva la Vida. Three of the eight "new" tracks are just alternate takes from the originally released A-sides. There's clearly a reason that these were scrapped. "Life in Technicolor II" takes the Viva opener, doubles it in length, and adds chintzy and underdeveloped lyrics about Martin's feet not touching the ground (which he also references in the final Prospekt track "New My Feet Won't Touch the Ground," as well as "Strawberry Swing" from Viva).

"Lost + (featuring Jay-Z)" is virtually the same as "Lost" on the original disc, but adds a completely displaced, unoriginal, and dynamically static rap from Jay-Z before the guitar solo. Other than that, there is no feature of Jay-Z or remixed hip-hop beat...just a one verse rap about Biggie and Tupac and things that have been rapped about for the last fifteen years. I don't doubt Jay-Z or his mad skillz, but his performance is a sad attempt by Martin and Parlophone Records to put a prolific name on a song in which it has no place.

The final repeater is "Lovers in Japan (Osaka Sun Mix)," in which there is literally no discernible difference between it and its original "Lovers in Japan/Osaka Sun" from Viva save for some background chanting during the choruses. From what I can tell, there was absolutely no earthly reason to put it on a bonus disc that is already decidedly lacking in bonuses.

Arguably worse than the repeating tracks, however, are the new songs on Prospekt's March. All five tracks are simply lesser versions of songs that were written better on Viva la Vida. There is no reason for a slow piano intro and odd-rhythmed chorus in "Glass of Water" (though it is Prospekt's only redeeming song, if any such thing exists) when you can hear the same art achieved much more effectively and beautifully on Viva's "Death And All His Friends." The other tracks aren't even worth a mention, as not one of them measures up to even Coldplay's earliest acoustic work (or James Blunt's for that matter).

Even more than the release itself, I found the very idea of Prospekt's March as accompaniment to its far superior predecessor to be outright offensive. With Viva la Vida, Coldplay worked hard to prove themselves a band worthy of rock (or at least pop) immortality, but with Prospekt's March they have undeified themselves and disserviced both their fans and the music loving world as a whole. This EP paves the way for other overpaid, cash hungry bands and record companies to try releasing half-assed B-sides as viable bonus discs when the original itself was more than sufficient for an albumsworth of listening. The fact is that Prospekt's March was completed during the Viva la Vida sessions, and Coldplay's record company rightfully decided to scrap those songs. Their ulterior motive, we now know, was to fleece the consuming public into buying an overpriced and underachieved bonus edition of an album that hundreds-of-thousands of gullible preteens and their parents had already purchased when it was worth something back in June. Coldplay owes their fans at least an apology, if not a collective refund, and a promise that in the future they'll stick to their A-game and leave the B-sides on the cutting room floor.

Iron & (Fine) Wine

I approached last night's Iron & Wine show like any other: with a hypercritical mind full of skepticism that Sam Beam and co. could possibly rise to the occasion of recreating the magic that they made on last year's second most addicting album (next to In Rainbows), The Shepherd's Dog. After Beam's so-so solo performance at this year's inaugural Rothbury Festival, an acoustic greatest hits show complete with charmingly sincere and humble banter, I wasn't sure that the album could translate to the full band forum. From the first note, I knew that my doubts were completely unfounded.

Beam took the stage with his acoustic guitar in one hand and his sister, Sarah, in the other, and what ensued were some of the most hushed and tender harmonies that I have ever witnessed two people create. The Beams were so earnest, so genuine in their delivery of the acoustic set, that it was hard to believe that they've played those songs hundreds of times for tens-of-thousands of people. The moment of truth, though, was when the band slowly added themselves to the mix. First piano, then electric guitar and bass. The drums subtly complemented the build, and remained -- as they are on Iron & Wine’s studio work -- low in the mix, a fluttering undercurrent of tom rolls; and finally Sarah Beam picked up a violin and the band launched into the more expansive Shepherd's Dog songs.

And launch is really the way to describe it. The build was slow and steady, and once the band slipped their moors the music shot right into the stratosphere. By the time I&W reached a climax with "Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)," Beam's electric rhythm guitar was a driving prominent force and the meditative acoustic set had all but worn off. When one heckler called for "Freebird," Beam was tempted to oblige, and even jokingly played the opening few bars to the Skynyrd classic. They mixed a surprising number of the acoustic-tending Our Endless Numbered Days, which they managed to spice up with an especially interesting and instrumentally diverse structured jam on On Your Wings and a heartwrenchingly honest version of Sodom, South Georgia. It is this honesty, Beam's ability to practically reach inside and touch the audience's collective soul and convey his fears joys losses loves heartbreaks, that truly defines him as a songwriter and performer. His voice, while as hollow as the marimba that was on stage with him, has a very distinctive timbre that lends itself well to both his lone wolf and his band leader personae, especially when combined with that of his sister (or, for that matter, her violin and accordion).

Part of my concern leading up to the concert was all the negative press that the venue Terminal 5, was getting. From the poor acoustics, to the deficient soundman, the main complaint was the quality of what came out of the speakers, not the quality of what was being put into them. I stood downstairs across from the stage for Blitzen Trapper's entertaining opening set and watched most of the I&W concert from the balcony with the swaying, less claustrophobic masses, and I can say that from where I stood the sound was very much like any other mid-large venue. Enough to hear the music being made as long as everyone around you wasn't yapping away. I chalk any complaints about Terminal 5 up to the fact that New Yorkers tend to prattle on constantly, even when it's not welcome, and especially during concerts.

When all was said and done, and with promises of a not-too-distant return, the Beams devolved from the complexity of Iron & Wine into their most natural selves. Standing at the microphones, Sam with guitar in hand, they somberly and evocatively sang a characteristically wispy "The Trapeze Swinger," and left the noisy crowd in silenced awe.

The Dirty Mac (featuring Mitch Mitchell)

In 1968, with the Beatles still at the height of their power and riding the wave of The White Album, John Lennon was called upon by Mick Jagger, host of the BBC TV Special The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, to perform a song in front of an audience. Though The Beatles had not played a live concert in over two years since the inception of sampling and looping during the Revolver recordings in 1966, Lennon took it upon himself to join Jagger's Circus.

The '60s were chock full o' collaboration, and given The Beatles' inability to perform their electronically complex music in a live forum, Lennon decided to be the first member to deviate from the group . Enter: The Dirty Mac. As a play on the ever popular Fleetwood Mac, Lennon formed a supergroup of rockers that has been virtually unrivaled in the 40 years since, save for the Traveling Wilburys. For Dirty Mac, Lennon chose Rolling Stones bassist Keith Richards, Cream guitarist Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell.

It is Mitchell's recent death that lead me to discover Dirty Mac. Despite my penchant for Beatles history and that of 1960s rock in general, the group had somehow slipped under my radar. Perhaps it is because it only had one performance, and it was of a Beatles song ("Yer Blues") that had been released only a few months earlier on The White Album (the band also backed Yoko Ono and violinist Ivry Hitlis for the set's second and final song), but given the amount I've read about the the late 1960s, the Lennon-Ono fiasco, and the subsequent Beatles' breakup, a riveting performance of a Beatles' song by a band other than The Beatles at the height of their popularity seems a rare and exciting event.

What truly sets this performance apart from a Beatles' performance is, of course, the players. Surely McCartney and Richards are at an equal level of skill, and Harrison was, at the time, arguably a better guitarist than Clapton, but Mitchell is leagues better than Ringo Starr. I'm no Ringo basher -- more of an admirer, really -- but Mitchell is pure dirty blues. With his relentlessly hardhitting style, he takes "Yer Blues" to a very different place than Starr did. Mitchell's heavyhandedness lends the lyrical touch that, in this case in particular, Starr's lacks. Again, I mean this not to discount the original beat, which carries the song well, but only to accentuate the appropriateness of Mitchell's harder blues. Lennon's lyrics are some of his darkest to that point, drawing heavily on the pain he felt from his heroin withdrawal (or so the story goes) and intense self-loathing, as evidenced by his screeching "even hate my rock and roll, yes I'm lonely, wanna die..."

After Liberty DeVitto, Mitchell was the second drummer whose style I melded into my own and his work on songs as intense as "Fire" and airy as "Hey Joe" are still very obvious influences on most drummers that play the blues today. Most impressive was his rare ability to capture the musicality of the song and the songwriter, a skill that most drummers would do well to work harder at developing. Whether the rapid eighth notes that kick off Hendrix's "Machine Gun" or the awkward breakdown that comes towards the end of the "Yer Blues" guitar solo, Mitchell was a champion and pioneer of melodic drumming in rock and blues.

Steal This Comic

(from XKCD)

Review: Brightblack Morning Light - Motion To Rejoin (2008)

The latest “indie” craze, folk psychedelia, has its roots deeply entrenched in the history of modern music. The folk is almost never that of the Dylans and Mitchells of the past, but instead heavily references John Fahey’s “American Primitive” movement of the 1960s and 70s; while the psychedelia is, of course, drawn directly from the likes of Pink Floyd and more modern shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine.

On their eponymous 2006 debut, Brightblack Morning Light took the burgeoning genre under their wing and produced a truly soaring psych-folk album that was built on the foundations of their long history with the legendary Will Oldham. The album used exciting instrumentation and percussion from across many styles that, when combined with the repetitiveness that all but defines psych-folk and the breathy harmonies between core duo Rachel Hughes and Nathan Shineywater, make for a genre defying mix of blues, rock, jazz, Latin, and – of course – folk.

The second time around, BBML attempted to repeat the prodigious results of their first effort. And, rather than build upon what had laid the groundwork for a lot of music growth and exploration, they did just that: repeated. The vocal recordings have a distinctly grainy, old-radio, Devendra Banhart quality to them, and the organs, horns, and woodwinds are out in full force. Since Brightblack Morning Light was such an intensely fulfilling album, it is difficult to criticize Motion To Rejoin (Matador, 2008), especially considering the excellence that lies at its heart. It is exactly as one would hope – jazzy, gritty, instrumentally diverse, vocally ghostly, lyrically eerie – but it is essentially an extension of its predecessor.

When I first heard Motion, I was disappointed that nothing new had been posed to listeners. The same repetitions, the same blues cadences, the same droning organ. “A Rainbow Aims” was the only track that I really enjoyed. Upon my second listen, I had found two more: “Gathered Years” and “Past a Weatherbeaten Fencepost.” And, when I sat down to listen a third time, I finally understood the album.

Motion To Rejoin is not a folk album in any traditional sense. The songs are not verse-chorus-verse and there is no acoustic guitar. In fact, the songs are just epic repetitions without structure (and I mean that in the best way possible). What I finally came to understand about the album is that it can’t be listened to as an “album” in the way that we’re used to. Splitting Motion into separate tracks is akin to trying to split the movements of Mozart’s Requiem. They can be listened to separately, but the power of the piece is in the sum of its parts.

The repetition that can often be a little tedious is the same as any leitmotif or theme in classical music. It is meant to be noticed, to ground both the listener and the piece itself. It is the apex around which the rest of the piece or, in this case, the album orbits. The reason the three chord blues cadence repeats in at least four different tracks as the underlying theme is that it is the underlying theme.

In light of my newfound understanding, I gave Motion a fourth listen (and have since given it many more), only to find that each time I enjoyed its repetitive nature more and more as I came to understand its purpose. While at first I reviled the album as a whole because of its parts, it wasn’t until I came to understand how each part worked together that I could truly appreciate the album in its entirety.

Yet, the repetition of a leitmotif, a fairly unusual approach to modern folk music, can get a bit bogged down in itself. “Summer Hoof,” “Hologram Buffalo,” and “When Beads Spell Power Leaf” all get wrapped up in the cadence to the point of dragging. Instead of lulling the listener into the theme, BBML is at times forcing it down our throats. What’s more, the three-chord theme is, while purposeful, painfully simple. The band has a lot of room to either move and fill in space or to let that space ring out, but the simplicity that they chose hints at minimalism that borders on laziness.

The structurelessness of the repetition that makes the songs so epic also leads to a sense of buildlessness, in which the songs don’t move enough but rather stay too comfortably rooted in the foundation of their thematic cadence. The effect is soothing at times, haunting at others, and just plain sleepy a little too often.

The blending of classical leitmotif structure with modern instrumentation and folk stylings is a historically significant event, and it is why I was able to come around to this album so quickly. It is rare that I harshly judge an album on first listen and it manages to turn my opinion in such a short amount of time. The novelty and success with which Brightblack Morning Light has undertaken, composed, and recorded Motion To Rejoin should not be overlooked, even in the face of flawed results.