I Was Meant for the Stage
Long live the rock-opera!
So sayeth The Decemberists, those ramblin’, politickin’, folk-pop purveyors of twee antiquity and ye olde literary lyricism. Colin Meloy and his band of Oregonian merry men have dabbled with grandiose narrative before —their 2005 EP The Tain was a single 18-minute track based on a mythological Irish epic— but there's little doubt that this latest longplayer is Meloy's most ambitious work of authorship yet.
The fifth Decemberists albums is a 17 song, hour-long musical, whose plot is linear and unbroken. Its tragic tale concerns a young lady name Margaret, her numerous suitors, a Woodland Queen, and various nefarious developments; Meloy's writing filled, oncemore, with fanciful Victoriana, as he summons recidivist images of sinister magic, infanticide, and ghosts.
A Song-Story
The Hazards of Love takes its musical-theater/radio-play dreaming seriously enough that Meloy brings aboard other voices to match his own, now-familiar nasal, Robyn Hitchcock-esque sneer. Amusingly enough, Hitchcock is one of those voices; he, Rebecca Gates, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, and a chorus of Dickensian children providing chorus and color behind Meloy's narration. Taking starring vocal roles are My Brightest Diamond’s already-theatrical Shara Worden, and Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark, whose endlessly pretty voice seems, somehow, prettier still in her recurring, in-character role.
Musically, The Hazards Of Love veers between harpsichord interludes and bulldozing riffs, openly drawing influence from those twin English movements of the late-’60s/early-’70s: heavy metal and the folk-revival. Taking inspiration from both Led Zeppelin IV and Shirley & Dolly Collins’ Anthems In Eden, Meloy summons the golden age of the album not as some kind of rote, myopic, Vetiver-ish nostalgia, but as a stand of defiance against modern listenership; referencing the concept-record past as way of escaping from the single-track-downloading present.
Written, conceived, and executed as linear work, The Hazards Of Love is a rare record in 2009. Though accessible, released on a major-label, and sure to find a wide audience, it is the opposite of every CD that just randomly throws songs together. Here, Meloy has authored an album that demands to be experienced, sequentially, from start to finish.
Record Label: Capitol
Release Date: 24 March 2009
