The Decemberists’ change in direction is sure to please fans both old and new

What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
The Decemberists (Capitol, 2015)

There’s something quaint about the Decemberists’ lead singer, Colin Meloy. He’s a guy who writes sea shanties, who uses words like “dirigible,” and whose music could be the backdrop of a Charles Dickens novel. And yet, the Decemberists are current enough to have a playful “feud” with Stephen Colbert and a reference to Axe shampoo in this, their latest album.

While these historical and modern worlds shouldn’t blend this well, they do in the river of talent and certainty that is the Decemberists. In What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, they continue to do what they do best: spin old-timey lyrics and instrumentals around modern ideas and concerns.

In the opening song, “The Singer Addresses His Audience,” Meloy addresses the tendency to turn musicians into idols. In interviews, he has discussed the “weird captive ownership” of fans over artists and how change is always accompanied by the fear of losing fans. Is this the Decemberists changing?

Perhaps. In an uncharacteristic turn, Meloy references Axe shampoo but returns to his Victorian ways in “Cavalry Captain.” It’s almost a relief as it just wouldn’t be a Decemberists album without an allusion to a long ago war, preferably a bleak one with bayonets and orphaned children.

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In many ways, the opening song directs the listener into the album. Listen, says Meloy. We’re changing. We’re leaving behind our laudanum, legionnaire, chimbley sweep-referencing ways. In “Anti-Summersong” (an allusion to “Summersong” on the Decemberists’ 2006 album, The Crane Wife), Meloy sings, “I’m not going on just to sing another sing-a-long, suicide song.”

So he doesn’t. The departure isn’t dramatic and the change is nice. But diehard fans need not fear. The Decemberists’ sound and their insistence on a slightly more daguerreotype than digital view of the world remains intact. For that, we can all breathe a collective, Dickensian sigh of relief.

This review appeared in the April 2015 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 80, No. 4, page 42).