Music |
The Crane Wife
The Decemberists
By
Published: Jan 01, 2006
Category:
Rock
The Crane Wife
The Decemberists
A 12-plus-minute song-cycle about a mystical island inhabited by Shakespearean witches and mythical giants?
Sure, why not.
An 11-minute song-cycle based on a Japanese folk tale?
Umm, okay…
Surely, The Decemberists’ chief songwriter and front man Colin Meloy wasn’t looking to storm the pop charts when he crafted this fine major-label debut for his bandmates. Probaby not even the adult contemporary charts.
Take a progressive rock pastiche of elliptical lyrics, obscure themes, unique language (when was the last time you heard ‘dirigible’ used in a rock album?) an odd assortment of instruments (bouzouki, glockenspiel, hurdy-gurdy, and hammered dulcimer chiefly), and what have you got? Oddly, wonderfully, the result is a memorable album of American alternative something.
Swinging from song constructions right out of an Emerson, Lake and Palmer concert (‘The Island’ song cycle) to straight-ahead rock (‘A Perfect Crime’) to strumming folk (‘Sons & Daughters’), the Decemberists have produced an album that nods heavily toward progressive rock without embarking down its path of pretentious indulgence. And it ambles toward No Depression-style alt-country but doesn’t succumb to its strictures.
Instead, listening to The Decemberists’ ‘The Crane Wife’ brings the listener face-to-face with something too rare in American record bins — a band that pushes the boundaries of ‘rock’ music, but whose work doesn’t require cult-like parsing to enjoy. Meloy’s songs are odd, unpredictable even, but not overtly challenging. It’s to the band’s credit that while ‘The Crane Wife’ may be The Decemberists’ most accessible album, it doesn’t forsake the band’s trademark off-kilter tastes.
And about that Japanese folk tale that provides the album its title? It delivers some of the album’s most arresting images of kindness, selflessness and greed. The fact that you’ll end up singing along to its marching rhythms, swirling organs and strumming guitars is a testament to Meloy’s ability to weave memorable tunes out of the most unusual of materials.
You won’t hear ‘The Crane Wife’ on the radio. And The Decemberists may be in danger of becoming one of those bands that people in their 40s who subscribe to Paste magazine talk about to impress their demographic cohorts. But listen — and forget all the rest. The joy of hearing a band that works hard to sound only like itself is too rare to be dismissed, and the album it simply too memorable and enjoyable to be overlooked.
The Decemberists may be stretching the normal conventions, but rather than confronting you with cleverness, it’s music that happily takes you along for that ride.
— Guest Butler Matthew Greenberg is an Internet editor and writer in Washington, DC.
To buy ‘The Crane Wife’ from Amazon.com, click here.
