Grammy-nominated Portland, Oregon rockers The Decemberists cite Roxy Music and British folks as influences, enjoyment of creating idea albums and embrace the idea of musical theatre. In 2018, as they launched eighth album I’ll Be Your Lady, we requested chief Colin Meloy in regards to the band’s prog credentials.
With its nagging synth arpeggio and punching, slashing glam rock guitars, Severed – the lead single from The Decembrists’ eighth album I am going to Be Your Lady – appears like Roxy Music operating headlong into artwork rock ‘it’ woman St Vincent.
It sounds nothing, in actual fact, just like the band from Portland, Oregon’s two earlier data, every one rooted in American alt-folk-rock; or certainly like all of the 4 different wide-ranging releases that preceded them.
“Roxy Music was form of our guiding star throughout the first week within the studio, although I believe we moved fairly far astray from that,” says Colin Meloy, frontman and songwriter. “I believe artists who work proper on the fringe of their understanding and skill could make the very best work of their lives.
“If you’re working inside your consolation zone, you could be making stuff that’s business or interesting and pays your payments – however is that the stuff that’s necessary? The issues I’ve been most enthusiastic about are the place I really feel I’ve actually pushed myself.” His remark could possibly be an extract from a prog rock manifesto.
The Decemberists, who fashioned in 2000, have habitually taken a scenic route by way of music. In 2004, the quintet – accomplished by bassist Nate Question, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, guitarist Chris Funk and drummer John Moen – launched a labyrinthine 18-minute observe primarily based on Irish epic The Táin. Their fourth album, 2006’s The Crane Spouse, pivoted two detailed track cycles spherical a Japanese folks story.
Meloy was a Smiths obsessive as he took a artistic writing programme on the College of Montana. His tastes expanded to embody the alt-country motion of the late 80s and the British folks revival of twenty years earlier. Alongside the day job he’s issued a string of limited-edition covers EPs corresponding to Colin Meloy Sings Morrissey and Colin Meloy Sings The Kinks. He’s additionally penned the Wildwood trilogy, a sequence of bestselling youngsters’s books.
“As a child, I used to be form of misplaced in my very own world loads,” he explains. “My dad and mom used to name me ‘the underwater boy’ as a result of I used to be off in my very own head a lot. I’ve had that drive to create issues and tales ever since then. It’s prefer it’s a muscle that has to get used.
“Early on with The Decemberists – significantly after we didn’t actually have anybody listening to us – it felt very liberating to strive new issues. I’d suppose, ‘If I used to be in a metallic band I’d completely make an idea report a few mythological Irish textual content.’ Then it occurred to me that I used to be in a band, so what was stopping me?”
A report is a group of songs, like a ebook of quick tales. The very best story collections have a thread binding them collectively
By 2007, the band (named after an 1825 revolutionary rebellion in Imperial Russia) had accelerated to the purpose of getting carried out 5 exhibits accompanied by full orchestras, together with a date on the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic. That led on to their most elaborately conceived report, The Hazards Of Love, in 2009.
Beginning off as a musical theatre piece, it ended up a full-blown idea album, replete with recurring themes, a parade of characters and an episodic narrative a few lady named Margaret and her shape-shifting lover. The title was lifted from a 1964 EP by stalwart English folkie Anne Briggs. It was one thing Jethro Tull might need conceived.
“I by no means actually listened to that a lot Tull; I nonetheless haven’t,” Meloy says. “Jenny is de facto the Tull-head within the band. To my thoughts, The Hazards Of Love owed as a lot to the British folks revival artists – Fairport Conference, Shirley Collins and Anne Briggs – because it does to among the 70s prog data that I encountered rising up.
“I simply actually appreciated the thought of enjoying with the style and the medium just a little bit; piece collectively a folks story and folks archetypes and see what sort of story it could create. I believe we’d established by then that we have been comfy enjoying with these longer-form narratives. The Tain had form of set you as much as be ready for what was coming subsequent.”
The Hazards Of Love did include not less than one express prog reference: the introductory keyboard sample was a nod to the opening bars of Roger Glover’s 1974 fantasy rock opera The Butterfly Ball And The Grasshopper’s Feast, on which the Deep Purple man reinterpreted the kids’s poem with assist from David Coverdale, Ronnie James Dio, Glenn Hughes and others. “Mother bought it from the library after I was a child and I listened to it endlessly,” Meloy says.
The Decemberists took their magnum opus on the street and performed it in full, entrance to again, not fairly reaching the giddy heights of extra attained by Rick Wakeman doing his notorious King Arthur manufacturing on ice, however however very a lot consistent with the trailblazing spirit of The Who’s Tommy and Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and operating opposite to the austere temper of the occasions.
“Rick Wakeman did what?” Meloy gasps when point out is manufactured from the caped one’s barmy escapade of 1975. “You’re kidding, proper? Nicely, we missed a possibility there! After we did The Hazards Of Love at festivals, it was the alternative of what you’re speculated to do. In some methods there was boldness there – nevertheless it was additionally an impulse to self-sabotage. It was a really fascinating experiment; however popping out of it I felt abruptly {that a} cloud had lifted. I simply wished to go off and write music that folks might sing alongside to.”
The outcome was 2011’s The King Is Lifeless, wonderful however so REM-like in its alt-rock formality that guitarist Peter Buck made a visitor look. Its singalong facet was engaging sufficient for the album to debut at No.1 in America. Equally straight-ahead, What A Horrible World, What A Stunning World adopted in 2015 and have become a Prime 10 US hit.
I didn’t wish to make a topical report – I didn’t know if I used to be the man to try this – nevertheless it’s actually unavoidable that these things comes by way of
In contrast, there are moments – even complete songs – on I’ll Be Your Lady the place Meloy’s deep and mellifluous voice is the only tick acquainted to The Decemberists. New producer John Congleton has blessed the band with the slick surfaces and noir-ish undercurrents of his different purchasers Lana Del Rey and St Vincent. In the meantime, on propulsive tracks like The whole lot Is Terrible and We All Die Younger, Meloy isn’t a lot off with the fairies as staring down the barrel of Trump’s America.
He describes the temper of the album as a “nihilistic disco apocalypse,” which fits it very properly. “It couldn’t not be,” he says of this state-of-things subtext. “It’s such a calamity that we’re witnessing proper now. Regardless that I didn’t wish to make a topical report – I didn’t know if I used to be the man to try this – nevertheless it’s actually unavoidable that these things comes by way of.
“Making each report, you go into the studio as armed as you could be; generally with a reasonably good concept of what you’re going to do, generally not. This time I had a handful of songs. A few of them felt that they match collectively higher than others. The problem was to search out the thread that linked them.
“A report is a group of songs, like a ebook of quick tales. However I imagine the very best quick story collections are those the place there’s some a thread binding them collectively which means you learn it start-to-finish in that order. That’s how I’ve all the time approached sequencing data.”
He stays liable to vault for one thing otherworldly and infinite-sounding; and instance of that’s the peak level of I’ll Be Your Lady, a meandering eight-minute, two-part extravaganza titled Rusalka, Rusalka / Wild Rushes that fixates on two of his pet topics – our bodies of water and the other-beings that will lurk inside.
It picks up the place the band left off in 2017 with The Queen Of Hearts, launched below the title Offa Rex, a Grammy-nominated collaboration with English folks singer Olivia Chaney. It additionally means that Meloy isn’t completed with exploring and adventuring.
“I nonetheless wish to do a musical theatre piece,” he says. “I’ve made steps in the direction of that previously however then form of retreated. It’s been a query of looking for a approach in.
“In some methods, as a band I really feel like we’re on our personal island. Not as a result of we stand alone, essentially, however as a lot as a result of I’m deeply insecure by way of how I believe our band is regarded by different folks.