I took a class in screenwriting once. It was fun. We spent a lot of time talking about plot and character development, how to bring in disparate elements into one cohesive story, stuff like that. I think that what I liked best about the class was that it didn’t pretend that it could teach us how to write the next great American film (look how well that worked out for Michael Cimino), but rather it worked on just telling stories and having fun doing it. With that in my mind I co-wrote a script with no plot to speak of that had jokes about fat people having sex. My friend wrote a script about a civil war grave digger who can’t stop seeing and talking with the ghosts of all the soldiers he’s buried. Obviously my friend is somewhere closer to the wavelength of Decemberists lead singer Colin Meloy.
The latest opus from the Meloy led collective is filled with these types of stories and, make no mistake, they are stories. What has always set Meloy apart from the pack of literate indie songsmiths is that where both he and they knew who Miranda was, Meloy could write songs with words like pantaloons in them and not sound like a complete asshole. That in itself is a talent but the band came into itself on last years glorious Picaresque. Where as on their two previous efforts, the band played a secondary role to Meloy’s gothic narratives, Picaresque (I never get tired of saying that LP’s name) showed that the band had real musical chops and the album was far more melodic and rhythmically driven than previous efforts.
The Crane Wife feels like the culmination of all of the band’s work. It is perhaps not coincidental that this was the bands major label debut. In fact, if you turn all the electronic things in your house or apartment off and listen really carefully, you can hear the faint whimpering of the handful of indie scenesters who still give a hoot. Personally I’d like to believe that the band would have made this album regardless of label, but that’s beside the point. What is important is that The Crane Wife is the first Decemberists record that feels like the work of band. Almost everyone of the songs do showcase some major league production (the album is yet another platform for the underrated production chops of Death Cab For Cutie guitarist Chris Walla, who also produced Picaresque), but with the exception When The War Came, none of the songs suffer for it.
What should be of great comfort to fans of the band is that Meloy has not lost any of his lyrical chops. If anything he has grown as a lyricist. He still tackles ambitious subjects but like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, U2, The Who, Pearl Jam and more recently Bright Eyes, The Decemberists are a band that are in their element when pushing things toward the grandiose. The most shocking thing about The Crane Wife is that for most of the album, the listener isn’t crushed under the sheer weight of it all. The band has found a delicate balance between Meloy’s lyrical gravitas and his inclination towards pop melodies. And so with out further ado, we move on to the songs.
The album opens with The Crane Wife #3, the conclusion to a trilogy that is begun later on the album. Beginning as a delicate elegy, the song crescendos into a near sing along before the fading out. Fasten your seatbelts, because now it gets interesting. What follows is a nearly 12 minute, three part suite revolving around a mysterious island and some bad people doing some bad things on said island. I know, I know, it sounds like something Yes would have done about thirty years ago and it would have involved elves and sucked. There are some Yes style keyboard work on part one, entitled Come And See courtesy of Jenny Conlee but the music is more flowing and lyrical than most Prog rock. What the song really does, is showcase two members of the band who help make the album shine. One is bassist Nate Query and the other is guitarist Chris Funk. Query’s deft and subtle playing combine with John Moen’s steady drumming to provide the core of these songs and they allow Funk and Conlee to build vast melodic soundscapes that fit Meloy’s far reaching lyrics.
Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) follows, showcasing the vocal stylings singer-songwriter Laura Veirs as she takes on the role of a pregnant women communicating with her husband, killed in the Civil War. O Valencia! combines one of the band’s best melodies with atypical lyrics of star-crossed lovers who are forced to suffer a tragic fate (cause lets face it, in The Decemberists world, love always ends tragically). Summersong may even make polkas cool again, but I’m not holding my breath. The Perfect Crime #2 (I don’t know what happened to #1. Maybe when he’s done with sexy, Justin Timberlake can bring that back) even has a bass line that veers ever so close to funk.
Not to the say that album is perfect. The aforementioned When The War Came is a bit heavy on the Led Zeppelin Strung Und Dam for my taste and suffers from some lyrical goofs (“When the war came/the war came hard” ouch.). Shankhill Butchers is under produced and needs some more instruments to justify it’s length. The beginning of The Crane Wife trilogy that ended on the first track is, like The Island, ten plus minutes in length but it doesn’t have nearly as much musical invention in it and it drags towards the end.
I like albums that can be summed up in one song. It makes talking about them easier. The last song on The Crane Wife just about does that. Sons & Daughters is everything I’ve come to love about this group of quirky Oregonians. It’s bright and melodic and yet it’s lyrics are far from fluff. As a lyricist, Meloy takes on love and loss, life and death, fate and freewill with an ease I find myself quite envious of. That doesn’t mean everything he does is great, but it shows a willingness to fall flat that makes the band endearing. Too often though, those lyrics are spent telling beautifully tragic tales of heartbreak, suicide and war. Sons & Daughters comes down on the side of hope though. On this album of tragedy, the last words heard are “Hear all the bombs/They fade away.” I like that type of sentiment. At the end of the album, Meloy wants the listener to know that even amid all of the chaos that the music represents, there‘s still light at the end of the tunnel. There lies a place where writers of grand ambition meet with the purveyors of filthy sex jokes and share a glass of wine.
