#21 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — The Decemberists

January 11, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again by The Decemberists

At #21 we find a band I thought we’d never see on the Top 31 again. What’s even more surprising is that there’s at least 3 other bands coming up in the 2024 Top 31 that I would have lost money betting on them never making another appearance. So, I believe kudos are in order for The Decemberists, that merry band of minstrels hailing from Portland, Oregon, for truly surprising longevity, and for producing a truly great album in As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again.

It’s been six years since we last heard from the quintet (I’ll Be Your Girl, #15 in 2018), and it’s the fifth time the band has appeared in the Top 31 (rounding out the five are #18 in 2015, #3 in 2011 and #2 in the inaugural 2009 list). I’m confident had I been making my list since the turn of the century, all four of the band’s even earlier albums would have made an appearance. 22 years, The Decemberists have been making music. And it’s safe to say I’ve been a fan for the entire journey.

I must be suffering from some strong recency bias, as As It Ever Was ranks not only as a great record, it ranks as a great Decemberists record, much better than any of the past, oh, 3 albums. And yet here I am, placing it further down the list than any previous Decemberists album has appeared. Be that as it may, I’m going to stick with the narrative that this new album is a real return to form for the band. I suppose I should have expected that, given the title blatantly saying as such.

All the usual melancholy themes are here: death, darkness, and dread, sung with the same chipper trill I’ve loved for two decades from lead singer/songwriter Colin Meloy. Chris Funk (guitars), Jenny Conlee-Drizos (keyboards, and, more importantly, accordion), Nate Query (bass), and John Moen (drums), have all returned, happily writing and performing complex baroque-pop prog rock music accompaniment.

The band has traditionally produced some great videos to pair with their highly visual songs, but not this time around. The video above is a live version of “Oh No!” produced by the band, and a great Squirrel Nut Zippers-esque song. You can watch the band’s KEXP Live performance to hear a handful of other songs from the album, all great. But if you want to hear my favorite song from the album, you’ll have to tune into an “Official Audio” version from YouTube.

That song is “Joan in the Garden,” and it is a 19 minute, 21 second masterpiece. It has all of Meloy’s favorite words in it, like “firmament,” “mariner,” and “parquet.” It sounds a bit like a lost track from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. And it is wonderful. The Decemberists have excelled at the exceedingly long epic. There first was “California One / Youth and Beauty Brigade,” from their debut album, clocking in at 9 minutes, 50 seconds. Their EP, The Tain, from 2004, a telling of the Irish mythological story Táin Bó Cúailnge, covers the span of 18 minutes, 35 seconds of prog rock bliss. “The Island, Come And See, The Landlord’s Daughter, You’ll Not Feel The Drowning,” (yes, that’s the title of a single song), from 2006’s The Crane Wife, is 12 minutes, 26 seconds long. And that album also has its title song, broken up and switched around across parts “3” and “1 And 2” at 4:18 and 11:24, respectively (15 minutes, 42 seconds total). The Hazards of Love had “The Hazards of Love” parts 1-4 (“The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle The Thistles Undone,” “Wager All,” “Revenge!,” and “The Drowned”), but in reality the entire album is a single story, clocking in at 58:37. “Joan in the Garden,” from the year of our lord 2024, is better than all of them.

How a band of misfit theater nerds has ever achieved the longevity and accolades that The Decemberists have is beyond comprehension. Colin Meloy is a master storyteller, and the musicians who have long made up the band are masterful in their craft. While I never expected to get another great album from them, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again was a very pleasant surprise, and well worth the wait.

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#14 on the 2018 Bacon Top 31 — The Decemberists

January 18, 2019 by Royal Stuart

I'll Be Your Girl by The Decemberists

The Decemberists are a band I don’t know how to dislike. They’ve released four albums since I started the Bacon Top 31, and each one has been featured prominently: #18 in 2015, #3 in 2011, and all the way up at #2 in 2009. And now in 2018, their 8th album, I’ll Be Your Girl here at #14. And honestly, none of these last four albums are as great as their first four albums, all of which I still listen to at least once a year. Chances are more than one of those earlier albums would have been at #1 if the Top 31 had existed that year. But sadly it didn’t, so I’m left chronicling their later, less exciting but no less great output, and that’s squarely where this new album lies.

By now, nearly 20 years into their career as a band, The Decemberists have figured out what works for their brand of historical fiction rock. Lead singer Colin Meloy’s voice, affected and a bit too high to be considered “good” is always at the forefront of fantastically orchestrated and produced prog rock. What used to be sad stories about sad characters has taken a turn in this new album, with songs from a much more personal stance. Lines like “Oh, for once in my life could just something go right?” “Everything, everything, everything, everything, everything, thing, everything, everything, everything, everything, everything is awful” or the coup de gras:

I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I've been so long lonely and it's getting me down
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how

These are not thinly-veiled metaphors for difficulty. This is blatant, painfully obvious suffering, and it’s glorious. As the cherry on top, The Decemberists worked with photographer Autumn de Wilde to create a fantastic video for their song “Once in my Life,” shown above, which de Wilde used as a visual love letter to her 7'2" brother Jacob, and the troubles he experiences as he goes through life. It’s beautiful and sad and heartwarming all at the same time.

We’re all suffering through life in this presidency of awful, and the Decemberists are here to help you sing about it at the top of your lungs. Will I want to listen to this album forever? Probably not. But for now, in a time like today, this is perfect. Give it a listen and hear for yourself, you may find it helps you as much as it’s helped me.

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15. The More I Sleep the Less I Dream by We Were Promised Jetpacks
16. Joy as an Act of Resistance by IDLES
17. Hell-On by Neko Case
18. Superorganism by Superorganism
19. Living in Extraordinary Times by James
20. Thank You for Today by Death Cab for Cutie
21. Black Panther: The Album by Kendrick Lamar
22. Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film) by Thom Yorke
23. Merrie Land by The Good, the Bad & the Queen
24. Room 25 by Noname
25. WARM by Jeff Tweedy
26. God's Favorite Customer by Father John Misty
27. Vessel by Frankie Cosmos
28. For Ever by Jungle
29. Twerp Verse by Speedy Ortiz
30. Remain in Light by Angélique Kidjo
31. This One’s for the Dancer & This One’s for the Dancer’s Bouquet by Moonface

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Decemberists — Cavalry Captain

October 09, 2015 by Royal Stuart

It began yesterday, with a strange Instagram post by Decemberists’ lead singer, Colin Meloy, an animation that featured what appeared to be a religious revival of sorts, with Meloy as the lead evangelist. Underneath, the caption read:

"YOU" ARE ETERNAL CALL 971-23-ALIVE

So this morning, when I came across the post, and without any other information, I called the number. The recording on the other end began with a small clip from the song “Cavalry Captain,” from the band’s 2015 release What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, and then the voice of Meloy posing as “CM,” an evangelist with a message of love and finding your place in the universe. At the end of the recording, the listener was told to “to leave their most ardent wishes” after the tone.

Then later in the morning came the email from the Decemberists’ mailing list, with the same text as was spoken by Meloy in the phone recording. All of this seemed like a strangely timed release of even stranger material, promoting a record that’s already quite a few months old. But then I found the hook, in the caption for the video above, which reads:

We are all Decemberists. Please join us. Call 971-23-ALIVE to find your place in the universe. #Decemberism New EP 'Florasongs' available now.

So there you have it. A bizarre, excessive marketing push for a new EP from your favorite baroque pop band out of Portland, OR. Hop to it.

February 15, 2013 by Royal Stuart

Here’s Colin Meloy, Jenny Conlee and Nate Query from the Decemberists, along with Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie, and Peter Buck from R.E.M. performing R.E.M.’s “You Are the Everything” at a fundraiser held in Portland this past Wednesday night. It’s safe to say I would have killed to have been at this event, had I known about it.