So I recently picked up The King is Dead - The Decemberists' latest endeavor.  I was greatly chagrinned not to be able to acquire it back on the Jan. 18th release date, but I would say the wait has been worth it.

The Decemberists have been a favorite group of mine (very possibly *the* favorite, in fact) for more than 5 years now.  I do listen to quite a wide variety of music ("shuffle" on my playlist can, in fact, be somewhat jarring), but nothing has grabbed my fancy so much as to displace their quirky style from the top of my personal list.  Their last offering, The Hazards of Love, was wonderful though pretty significantly different from their previous records, so I was unsure what to expect from The King is Dead.  Some friends of mine told me that it has a rather greater folk or country influence than the others - and I can definitely see that.

"Country" music is something that I tend to approach with great caution.  One might also say "trepidation".  Or, sometimes, "scorn".  "Pop country", what you'd generally hear on any current radio station professing to be "Country", has a reputation for irritating the crap out of me.  That last statement is rather understated, but I don't wish to belabor it too far.  I'd say I like less than 1% of what they offer and actively dislike at least 75% - though very occasionally there is something I find clever, interesting or otherwise enjoyable.  Southern/Southwestern/Country-inspired rock is a bit of a different animal, and there are some groups fitting this genre that I enjoy listening to - Cowboy Mouth, The Refreshments, Old 97's.  Please note Lynyrd Skynyrd is not listed among them. Then there is also the Folk genre, which can sometimes blur the line between that which might be called country-ish and acoustic rock (See Also: Iron & Wine, Great Lake Swimmers, Fleet Foxes).  I left off Nickel Creek, which I also enjoy, because I'm not sure exactly where to put them. 

I have come to believe that it is not actually "country music" that i dislike inherently, only the archetypical implementation thereof: exaggerated.  Cowboy hats, pickup trucks, gender stereotypes, the 'good old boy' mentality, southern accents turned up to 11...you know the drill.  There's also an Axebeard Law equivalent regarding the typical lyrical content of this particular "style", but I don't want to dissect that just now.  Fortunately, The King Is Dead is none of these things.

On some specifics:

The opening track, Don't Carry It All, is just plain wonderful.  It near-instantly became one of my favorite songs they've recorded to date, possibly tied with Yankey Bayonet, Won't Want for Love and one or two others.  So many lines from that song I really love...

/let every vessel pitching hard to starboard/lay its head on summer's freckled knees/

/and you must bear your neighbor's burden within reason/and your labors will be borne when all is done/

/let the yolk fall from our shoulders/don't carry it all, don't carry it all/we are all our hands and holders/beneath this bold and brilliant sun/this i swear to all/

Down By The Water, which they released a month or two early as a free download, is also very good and This Is Why We Fight is another real winner.

The other songs on the album are, as of now, generally an 8 of 10 for my vote.  All of them are very good songs that I enjoy listening to, though nothing that necessarily blows me away - several (perhaps nearly all) of them, however, have some wonderfully clever lyrics tucked inside, and this is what i've come to expect and love from the Decemberists...  

/there are times life will rattle your bones and will bend your limbs/but you're still far and away the boy you've ever been/

/hey henry, can you hear me?/let me see those eyes/this distance between us/can seem a mountain size/

/and you won't make a dime/on this gray granite mountain mine/of dirt you're made and to dirt you will return/

I do have some minor compositional beefs which I started to outline here, but it's really just nit-picking and probably not terribly interesting to anyone else.  Suffice to say that, in my opinion, one or two of the "good" songs could have been "great".  Still, it's nothing that ruins it for me.

Bottom line is, I really like this latest record, and I would recommend it to anyone who's enjoyed the Decemberists' previous albums and anyone who enjoys folk-rock with some eccentricity.

--

On some other not-especially-current albums i've been enjoying lately:

First off, I have to mention Rainer Maria's (ironically) final album Catastrophe Keeps Us Together, which is an amazing record.  A few songs from their other albums are pretty good as well (particularly tracks like Atropine and Hell and High Water from A Better Version Of Me), but this one is very, very solid as a whole.

/the future's going out of focus/our talk is cheap, but the phone bill is not/and how could one word/mean another?/and why am i staying up alone in the dark?/when it all falls through/what else can i tell you?/you just can't turn me on and off/you turn me on and off/

/catastrophe keeps us together/we're the architects of the world/we're taking it all apart - /do you think we could go on forever/when the architects of the war/are handing out the swords?/

/the day we played as kids among the headstones/we pretended we had died/but now something's changed/we don't play games/and time has proved you right/and now memory has distorted your light/sing me something clear and true/in some otherworldly tune/if you were here i'd make it up for you/yeah, i'd make it up for you with the song i loved the most/i know you're here/and i'm not afraid of ghosts/

/how many rounds can i go?/and how can i soften the blows?/can i avoid them altogether?/my heart isn't in this/i'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter/feels like my first hit/and it hurts like hell/

In a huge stylistic divergence from the records previously mentioned herein, I've also been listening to quite a bit of Flogging Molly lately, specifically the album Float, but also quite a bit from other records.  This is another group I really love - and would really like to go see if they ever come within 100 miles again.  

/sick and tired of what to say/no one listens anyway/sing, that's all you can/

/oh an angel clipped my wings/from the back of a broken dream/so they'll probably never break my fall again/for i return to sing this tune/from the back of a broken dream/

/oh it's bitter the pill/that you swallow to feel/i don't care what i lost/just thank god i'm alive/makes it all who you are/that's the story so far/

I also want to give an honorable mention to mewithoutYou's It's All Crazy... - I've not listened to it as much lately, but it's never too far from my playlist.  The Fox, The Crow and the Cookie, of course, is classic - but there are some other great tunes on that album as well like Every Thought A Thought Of You and The Beetle King on a Coconut Estate.

Finally, I've been listening to The Starting Line's Based On A True Story, which is a concept album in a darker vein of "life imitates art" - and it's very well executed in my opinion.

~PS