(Capitol)
RECOMMENDED
I personally thought the Decemberists' 2011 album The King Is Dead was their best in several years -- certainly since Crane Wife, maybe since 2005's Picaresque. Given the album's broad commercial success, it seems most folks were as pleased with it as I was. Still, common criticism came from the expected quarters; a lot of it I couldn't relate to, especially from Britcrits who claimed that the sacrifice of the "expansive" (some would say convoluted and silly) Complexity of The Hazards of Love made the record feel like a compromise. But I do have some sympathy for the perspective that the album marked a move in a too-slick direction, with some fans mildly miffed at the countrified R.E.M. direction, missing the rough edges of the band's gawkier, geekier early work.
Those fans are likely to be pleased one way or another by the group's two short-form releases out this year. The first, iTunes Session, is quite simply a live-in-studio session from L.A. featuring stripped down takes on King, Crane, 5 Songs and Hazards deep cuts as well as covers of the Fruit Bats' "When U Love Somebody" and Leonard Cohen's "Hey! That's No Way to Say Goodbye." Some of the remakes are scarcely distinguishable from their standard LP counterparts ("Calamity Song" above all); some are interesting but not especially revealing ("This Is Why We Fight"); some are great lilting fun ("The Hazards of Love 4: The Drowned"). It's interesting to hear the older songs, "Shankill Butchers" and "Shiny," recast by Colin Meloy's newly expanded vocal range. The shock of the group, though, is the Cohen cover, which amazingly surpasses the original; the band reimagines one of Cohen's lesser early songs, a stark folk chord-picker, as steely country AM gold.
The second offering, Capitol's full-fledged widely promoted EP entitled (of course) Long Live the King, corresponds roughly to past supplemental releases in the band's oeuvre like the Always the Bridesmaid 7" set and the bonus disc Picaresqueties. The six included songs are audibly leftovers from the King Is Dead sessions, but certain fans are likely to be more charmed by them than they were by the often extremely polished, mainstream-friendly tunes on the record. To be sure, I personally think the twangy adult contemporary sound suits the Decemberists infinitely more than the desperately silly prog rock they spent a few years toying with, and to be even surer, not one of these selections can compete in terms of songcraft with even the lamest of the ten album tracks. The excesses of Hazards reappear, too; I don't agree with the complaints that Meloy is overly morbid, but I admit he loses my patience when harping on joyfully maudlin shit like the inexcusably drab "Burying Davy."
But what will keep you returning to the EP is its frayed edges; the slight lost feeling of the arrangements, the ragged edge in the twang that edges the Dead sound closer still to charming Appalachia (see especially "Foregone" and the priceless Grateful Dead cover "Row Jimmy"). Meloy could be a bluegrass singer; his feel for the open expanse of southern music doesn't feel like an affectation. It's genuine, never superficial. On The King Is Dead, his voice was so slick it seemed occasionally to be reaching for a silky Garth Brooks texture, an unexpected detour amid apocalyptic visions like "Calamity Song"; here, he is audibly straining, including into a sweetly flawed falsetto on closer "Sonnet," and in some ways it's a relief. For an EP of unabashed leftovers, it's a rather ingratiating band session, a handy reminder of just how complex and emotive the Decemberists, and Meloy in particular, can be. Word is that this is the last we will be hearing from the band for a good while, so enjoy.
[SEE ALSO:]
The King Is Dead (2011)
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