This Is Why We Fight
The Decemberists
Song Album For The Moment
The King Is Dead by The Decemberists
This past weekend, my two very “dad-like” midnight drives to and from northern New England were soundtracked by a new Decemberists album (received, courtesy of the Famous Popu-Lars, in what is most likely one of his final spoils from Medium). It’s fairly unusual for me to listen to too much music when I’m driving late at night: often, no matter how good the album, it lulls me to sleepy times.
This album, however, was able to touch upon something inside my noggin — and I soon found myself listening to it back to back, repeatedly on repeat, as the road stretched in front of me.
Truth be told, I dinnae know what to expect from a new Decemberists album… The Crane Wife — with it’s ten-minute prog-ish odes to The Tempest and ancient Japanese fables — is still one of my favorite albums, period. The Hazards of Love took their anthemic lit-rock sensibilities to a natural apex: a full-on concept album, serving as one continuous song about shapeshifters, Forest Queens and a girl named Margaret.
What could they possibly follow it up with?
This is not what I expected, by any means. All the flourishes that they’ve grown into over the past few years have been, quite simply, simplified. Stripped down. This is as straightforward an album as they’ve ever made, filled with lean, rootsy tunes.
And it is fantastic.
For me, it hit upon a distinct nerve in my music-loving past: R.E.M. More specifically, the days when I was focused on obtaining my drivers license and navigating the tumultuous waters of adolescence, while listening to R.E.M.’s Murmur on my Sony discman. There are tinges of the Joshua Tree/Rattle And Hum-era U2, and sprinkles of The Boss in his folksy times, but for me the heart of this album beats in sync with the jangly guitar from “Talk About The Passion”.
I was transported back to a younger time, when I listened to albums over and over, dissecting the lyrics and envisioning how the tunes would exactly how sensitive/misunderstood/angsty my teenage self was. To a time when I couldn’t just sift through hundreds (thousands!) of albums with the flick of a mouse or a thumb on my goddamn cell phone.
Again, it was fantastic.
And this is one of my favorites from the album. Enjoy.
