The Decemberists – albums ranked

The Decemberists are an indie folk rock band who sound as if they’ve been trapped in a wooden vessel on the deep blue sea for centuries, only to recently make landfall on the shores of America.  Colin Meloy leads the group with a troubadour’s tongue, while Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, John Moen and Nate Query round out the band with distinction.  Since their debut in 2002, The Decemberists have sharpened their talents with each subsequent release making them the epitome of indie rock.  Below is a review of each of their full-length albums in the order I would rank them.

1. The Crane Wife – The Crane Wife was released October 3rd, 2006 and is the first album on major label, Capitol Records, for the band.  Many fans stressed about the move to a major label for a band whose sound is the very essence of indie, but Colin Meloy and the rest of the band put minds at ease with a brilliantly clean album that follows an old Japanese tale about a man who nurses a wounded crane back to health.  Meloy’s writing has always been heavily influenced by literature and The Crane Wife is no exception.  He paints imaginative tales of love and war with diverse and colorful strokes, and the folk-rock the band is known for is sharpened to the point of becoming the prog-rock they display on The Hazards of Love.  The Crane Wife is a fantastic album from beginning to end and is perhaps the most important record the band will ever make considering their move to a major label.  My favorites from the album are the three-part track “The Island”, “The Perfect Crime #2” and “The Crane Wife 1 and 2”.
2. Picaresque – Picaresque is the third album for these indie-rockers from Portland, OR.  It was released on Olympia, Washington’s Kill Rock Stars label and Chris Walla from the band Death Cab for Cutie produced it.  Picaresque rocks more than the two previous releases and was a big step up towards their indie-rock prominence.  Opening track, “The Infanta” starts Picaresque off with a thunderstorm of banging toms and the album ends with the ballad, “Of Angels and Angles”.  What fills the in-between are some of the most accessible tracks the band has ever laid down including one of Meloy’s best ever, “The Engine Driver“.  “On the Bus Mall” is also fantastic as is the aforementioned opening track “The Infanta”.  Picaresque loses the theatrics and the result is an upbeat indie-rock record that’s a terrific place for any newbie of the band to start.
3. The Hazards of Love – The Hazards of Love is a major artistic accomplishment.  After releasing just one lp on Capitol Records, The Decemberists returned with a rock-opera of all things, and not surprisingly it works wonders.  The Hazards of Love was released March 24th, 2009, debuting at #14 on the Billboard 200 making it the most successful release by the band.  The album follows a tale of a woman named Margaret who falls in love with a shape shifting forest dweller named William, while an evil forest queen tries to wreak havoc on the two.  Becky Stark of the band Lavender Diamond sings the role of Margaret beautifully, while Colin Meloy plays William, and Sharon Worden of My Brightest Diamond plays the queen.  The Hazards of Love needs to be listened to as whole.  With each song folding into the next, Meloy put together a creatively theatrical masterpiece with plenty of progressive influence to display the maturation of the band.  If you had the opportunity to see The Hazards of Love performed live in its entirety, consider yourself lucky.  My full review of this album can be found here.
4. Her Majesty – Her Majesty opens with “Shanty for the Aretheusa”, a fantastic historical voyage into the depths of everything The Decemberists are known for.  There are references to spices, rum and tea leaves while an accordion fills in the musical spaces along with singer Colin Meloy’s voice.  By the end of the song,  Meloy is wailing as the acoustic and electric guitars grind away.  Released September 9th, 2003 on Kill Rock Stars,  Her Majesty is a relatively scattered album whose highlights succeed as a much as anything the band has ever written, but it also lacks the cohesiveness of the later albums.  It’s an ambitious prelude to Picaresque though, with my favorites being the opening track “Shanty for the Aretheusa”, the blatantly satirical “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” and the absolutely stunning “The Bachelor and the Bride“.
5. Castaways and Cutouts – Castaways and Cutouts is the impressive full-length debut by The Decemberists.  It was originally released May 21st, 2002 on Hush Records then reissued a year later on Kill Rock Stars.  Musically, the album revolves heavily around the the accordian and Hammond organ stylings of Jenny Conlee.  “Castaways and Cutouts” is an appropriate title for an album that is filled with tales of ghosts, prostitutes, gypsies and other castaways that songwriter Colin Meloy seems to invent at ease.  Overall Castaways and Cutouts is a nice consistent album albeit somewhat slow paced through the middle.  The ghostly opening tale “Leslie Anne Levine” is fantastic, as is the bass heavy “Odalisque”, and the epic finale, “California One / Youth and Beauty Brigade”.