First, I almost violently
dislike harmonicas, and it’s the
first thing I hear on the opening
track of The King Is Dead, an
album I haven’t listened to
in years, not since its release
way back in 2011, I’d guess.
An early fan, I think I
have nearly all of their first
albums on CD. I liked that they
were kind of local, all of
them actually Portlanders, except
Colin Meloy, a transplant
from Montana.
I liked that early in their career,
2001, right before Castaways and
Cutouts, my band shared a
stage with them once.
I liked that Colin Meloy
sounded English, and I liked
his lyrics–vocabulary rich,
literary, narrative, and strange.
In fact, early
in their career, the weirder
they got, the more I loved
them. Two years earlier, in 2009
for example, they pulled off a
concept album, The Hazards
of Love, a continuous play
sequence, the antithesis
of radio-friendly, hit-single
oriented pop music. Likely,
it was their least successful
record–while it was one of
my favorites. 2011 found them
leaning into a kind of straight
forward, folk adjacent, risk-averse
album that is pleasant enough,
with some strong, catchy melodies,
but too much harmonica and fiddle
for this listener. By contrast,
the first track on What A Terrible
World, What A Wonderful World,
doesn’t contain a single harmonica
or fiddle–but there’s some orchestration
and a kind of Beatle-esque prog jam
at the end, and the second tune
continues with this kind baroque-pop
thing that endeared me to the band
in the first place–and lots of female
background vocals. Okay, I say, I’m
back in the fold, at least for this record.
Not sure why I stopped here. I didn’t
pick up the next two studio albums
after this one. Maybe, while The King
Is Dead bored me, and The World Is A
Terrible Place seemed like a return to form,
somehow the spark for me was lost,
at least momentarily, going on a decade
now. I’m listening to “Lake Song” this morning
and it’s a beautiful one. Unusual for these
guys, it’s a piano oriented ballad. But
then the record gets increasingly
folksy as it progresses and the harmonica
once again rears its head. Tentatively,
I’d say that here’s another one of those
albums that was worthy of more
attention and that somehow got lost
in the stacks as I likely leaned toward
newer artists or more shinier objects.
Right before this, I remember,
the self-titled fourth outing from St.
Vincent came out, and shortly after,
the last David Bowie album. And there’s
the mystery laid bare, I think: while
this 2015 record by The Decemberists
is a strong collection, it fell short of
capturing my imagination fully, of
providing for me the sufficient enough
daily requirement of weirdness.
Notes on the vinyl editions: The King Is Dead, Capitol Records, 2011, black vinyl. What A Terrible World, What A Wonderful World, Capitol Records, 2015, double black vinyl with art etching and no audio on the fourth side.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response for each artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic.
michael jarmer 