headlessparrot's Full Review: The Crane Wife by The Decemberists
In his 1868 book The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, French writer Georges Polti compiled a list of (you guessed it) thirty-six dramatic situations that encompassed the basic plot patterns of all works of fiction. While Polti himself admitted that his list was likely not definitive, his work – along with the widely accepted theory about the limited number of conflicts in fiction (Man vs. Himself, Man vs. Man, Man vs. God, etc.,) and the oft-misattributed adage about there being only two types of stories (“a person takes a journey” and “a stranger comes to town”) indicates a belief that there really is nothing new. All fiction – in some way or another – is derivative of existing formulas or schema, whether it is aware of them or not. The same might be said about music – in fact, it is basically a given that all artists build – in some way or another – upon what came before them. Some take those classic formulas (the quiet-loud dynamic made famous by Nirvana, long mimicked by its post-grunge offspring) and leave them untouched, while others consciously twist and transform the known into the unknown. There is, then, nothing truly unique in music. But if there were one act today in the world of conventional popular music that gets even close, it would be Portland, Oregon's the Decemberists – a quintet whose wondrous knack for gorgeous melody and lush orchestration are matched only by their (seemingly paradoxical) lo-fi earnestness and a hyper-literate (or, more appropriately, hyper-literary) approach to songwriting.
The Decemberists, to me, represent all that is good about modern music by blending a pop sensibility and the aesthetics of timeless art that spans centuries, slyly nodding to the great works of the Classical, Romantic, Victorian, and modern eras. They are the kind of music that seems tailor-made for the lonely English students of the world, rich with metaphor, allusion, a sophisticated sense of humour, and pure character-driven storytelling. And, most importantly, repeated use of the words 'sinew,' 'dirigible,' and 'petticoat.' And all of these defining characteristics are just part of what makes their most recent album – and major label debut – The Crane Wife an absolute masterpiece, and the white horse candidate for the best album of 2006 (NPR has already proclaimed it so; I am quickly following suit).
Lead by singer/songwriter Colin Meloy, the Decemberists independently released their debut EP in 2001, and immediately took off in independent music circles. Signed to Hush Records, they released their full-length Castaways and Cutouts in 2002 and followed that up by joining the ranks of Kill Rock Stars where they resided for two albums (2003's Her Majesty, the Decemberists and 2005's Picaresque), before finally going big with Capitol Records on the Crane Wife. It is hard to say, however, how much things have changed for the band in five years. Their sound has matured and evolved, no doubt, but it has remained at heart distinctly Decemberists – they have remained critical darlings from early comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel (comparisons that were, admittedly, rather accurate, and occasionally a glimmer of Jeff Magnum suggests that they occasionally still are) to their more recent shift toward progressive rock and baroque pop, blended with a heavy folk influence, and they have done so on the strength of their unique songwriting (often marked by heavy doses of musical irony or self-conscious grandiloquence), their vibrant wit, and their lush, almost orchestral, instrumentation. The Decemberists , though not above the traditional arsenal of a rock band (as evidenced by the ferocious energy with which Colin Meloy wields his Gibson Les Paul on a handful of songs when I saw the band live), they often eschew those instruments in favour of the truly interesting and off-beat – accordions (most notably on the tragicomic A Cautionary Song), the double bass, cellos, the Hammond organ, violas (and violins), mandolins, bouzoukis, pedal-steel guitars, and dulcimers (and the list indeed goes on). As you can imagine, the result is eclectic, wonderful music that seems to perfectly capture the band's very essence, as defined by their brilliant lyricism.
Though Meloy has a limited vocal range (to return to the comparison, think Neutral Milk Hotel, though perhaps with a bit more spit-polish and flair for the dramatic), he is truly a master of his craft. A graduate of the University of Montana's Creative Writing program, he has brilliantly applied his studies not to fiction, but to songcraft, creating compact four-minute universes in which seemingly anything can happen - rather than falling back on the vague introspection of most modern music, he creates true characters and simply places them into dramatic situations that are ripe for exploration – the mother who sells her body to sailors in order to feed her resentful children, the lonely, wandering soldier, and the mourning wail of an infant - Leslie Anne Levine - dead only hours after her birth. This cast of characters is as rich and well-developed as any novel or film; a rag-tag bunch of criminals, social misfits, victims, historical curiosities, and tragicomic figures who are truly deserving of the title of the band's first LP – Castaways and Cutouts – and who could only ever truly be given justice by Meloy's sense of dramatic flair, narrative timing, and perfect irony (both dramatic and musical). As one reviewer on Amazon.com put it (though he meant it far less glowingly), Colin Meloy is "the master of the pirate song cycle."
Produced by Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla, The Crane Wife, then, is essentially the logical culmination of this brilliant mixture of gorgeous, sonically rich and diverse music and wondrous, centuries-spanning narrative eloquence. Though it be major-label in name, it bears none of the scarring marks of commercialization (beyond, perhaps, Meloy's talent for pop melody, something that he has undoubtedly always possessed), but is rather a triumphant salute – hand in the air, flag waving - to the artistic power of music, a set of stories that is alternately tragic, terrifying, uplifting and, ultimately, universal.
Critics have been quick to jump over themselves in proclaiming the Crane Wife to be one of the greatest modern concept albums, but this is a misnomer of sorts. Though the Crane Wife certainly has a 'unifying' story (based on a famous Japanese folk-tale that plays to the nature of greed and is rich with the kind of dramatic grandiloquence that Meloy loves), labeling it as a concept album does the work an injustice, even to the point where it diminishes the structural, narrative unity of the band's past works. It is perhaps better to look at the Crane Wife as one would look at the whole of the Decemberists' catalog – series of highly-detailed, perfectly painted vignettes contributing to an abstract narrative arc. In this case, that narrative arc is made somewhat more concrete, by (sort of) bookending the album with the tale of the Crane Wife (which, for the curious, goes approximately as follows):
A poor man discovers a wounded crane and, after nursing it back to health, a woman arrives whom he falls in love with and marries. They are still poor, and so the wife offers to weave clothes out of silk under the condition that he never watch her make them – the clothes sell well, and so the husband greedily makes her weave more and more, unaware of the damage that it is doing to her health. When he is finally overwhelmed with curiosity and must see how she weaves such wonderful garments, he discovers a crane at the loom, plucking feathers from her own body. The crane sees the husband and immediately flies away, never to return.
This narrative, however, is interrupted by glimpses of the rest of the world, captured in their own vignettes, and painting a rich, textured world that spans centuries and continents, from the poverty-stricken tragic world of the Crane Wife, Pts. 1, 2 & 3 to the elaborately planned murder/heist of The Perfect Crime #2, the real-life cautionary tale of Shankill Butchers, the gangland tragedy of O Valencia! and the epic wartime struggle-turned Iraq War protest of When the War Came.
The Crane Wife opens, anachronistically, with The Crane Wife, Pt. 3, capturing the final moments of the Crane Wife folk tale, as the husband discovers the crane weaving and laments, “How were my eyes so blinded?” over the gently but vibrantly strummed dulcimer, as the drums carefully ricochet and the piano swells and – is that an xylophone? The song builds from nothing – the strummed dulcimer and Meloy's tortured vocal performance, as instruments gradually enter the mix, culminating in a dramatic climax that shifts to feedback before jumping into the album's second track, The Island, a three-movement, twelve-minute anthem that combines the very best of the Decemberists (the suite is itself allegedly a musical re-interpretation of Shakespeare's The Tempest) with sly nods to Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and the epic bombast of Led Zeppelin. Beginning with a thunderous, furious introduction section that recalls an almost mechanized, grinding tribute to Pink Floyd's Animals or even Childhood's End (itself an early precursor to the classic Time), the opening movement, Come and See, shifts to a sharply plucked acoustic instrument before again rebuilding to a thunderous climax over which even Meloy's limited vocal range absolutely soars. The Landlord's Daughter, begins by shifting to a swirling, Hammond organ-fuelled pirate jig of sorts, paying lyrical tribute to the traditional Irish arrangement Whiskey In The Jar ("Produced my pistol, then my saber to make no whistle or thou will be murdered") and building once more to a frenetic pace before drifting into a gently strummed acoustic melody that caps the fury of the preceding nine minutes with vivid, haunting imagery of murder and condescension.
Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then), meanwhile, serves as a tragic duet between a soldier (Meloy) and his girl (Laura Veirs), Elton John and Kiki Dee's Don't Go Breaking My Heart tragically transplanted to the horror of the American Civil War, and with the tragic arrival of a child on the way – one who, we are vaguely suggested, will never see his father. And yet the song ends on a triumphant note, as the haunting “Oh oh ohs” of the vocals are replaced by the soldier and girl together vow that they will “come on the breath of the wind.”O Valencia!, next, is a beautifully throbbing pop number, jangly yet passionate, lyrically falling somewhere between Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story and Morrissey's First of the Gang to Die – as the narrator tells of the death of his lover, the member of the rival gang (it has been pointed out the possibility that this lover may not be female – Valencia being the name of a street in San Fransisco where the story is situated, rather than the name of the star-crossed lover – only adding to the careful constructed intrigue of the story). And the Decemberists perfectly illustrate their musical uniquity here, as the jangly pop instrumentation undercuts Meloy's final, blood-curdling vow that he will “burn this whole city down.”
The Perfect Crime #2 is a bit of a curiosity, set to a thumping, almost disco beat and relating the story of an elaborately executed murder/heist (in the vein of, say, Reservoir Dogs). The song's pulsating beat and danceable vibe make it unique to the Decemberists catalog, but it only serves to illustrate the band's brilliant eclecticism – though it further demonstrates that Meloy knows his literary devices, singing to the muses for inspiration in the song's dramatic first seconds ("Sing, muse, of the passion of the pistol"); it is, however, better heard live, where Meloy adds a searing guitar solo and, during the careful, quiet, bass-heavy second verse, again nods to Morrissey as he repeats “We can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry...”When the War Came is an abbreviated, five-minute epic, its retelling of the siege of Leningrad in World War II (set, curiously, in a botanical institute) accompanied by the thunderous bombast of John Moen's bass drum, simulating the epic bombast of Led Zeppelin's When the Levee Breaks – while the subtle Hammond organ and the ascending line in the first phrase of each verse (“With all the grain of Babylon”) knowingly mimics their No Quarter. Shankill Butchers is likely the Crane Wife's weakest cut, but it is still notable, not just for its treatment of a real-life subject (turning the true stories of the Shankill Butchers' brutality into their own “you better do as you're told” parental cautionary tale), but for Meloy's pained, breathy, haunting vocals.
The true centerpiece of the album, however, is the Crane Wife, Pts. 1 & 2, the second track to clock in at over ten minutes, and such a wonderful mixture of melody, instrumentation and songwriting that it may be the song that – at least for now - defines the Decemberists; a song that is not just beautiful, and evocative, but simply pretty. Beginning with a galloping, bouncing strummed acoustic guitar and Meloy's tender, quavering, vocals, a cello gradually enters the mix and grows in volume – it is perhaps this slow, searing cello part that makes the song so haunting, although the pained cries of Meloy perhaps help in this regard as well. And, as with Part 3 of the Crane Wife trilogy, the song builds to a wonderfully melodic crescendo, galloping along as the instruments accentuate each downbeat before slowing down for Part 2 of the suite, marked by its droning, sombre tone and the dramatic grandiosity of its finish as Meloy cries the songs' final line after a closing musical flourish, “...My crane wife...” It is Sons & Daughters, however, that acts as the album closer, despite the fact the Crane Wife, Pts. 1 & 2 would have worked just as well; Sons & Daughters, however, is a more-than-adequate closer, an upbeat number, a jangly singalong that ends with the repeated, anthemic line, “Hear all the bombs fade away,” defying the tragedy and pessimism of the rest of the album with one shining light of joy, happiness, and hope for the future. Some have labeled the Crane Wife an anti-war album, perhaps on the grounds of this song alone. I'm not entirely sure that this is an apt description, but, for a moment at least – as the album's coda gradually fades – it's a classification that works, as you feel it in your very heart.
I am still undecided as to whether the Crane Wife is the Decemberists' best album (each of their albums certainly has a valid claim on that title, so it is a remarkably contentious battle), and that indeed says a lot about the Decemberists – more than, perhaps, I've said even in a 2000 word review. All you really need to know, however, is that the Crane Wife is my choice for album of the year; not only is it a superb record that I have been listening to consistently since its October release, but it is the mark of a band that – even after four albums of unbelievably consistently great indie rock - still has an unbelievably bright future ahead of it. In fact, my one and only criticism of this record on any level is the absence of the iTunes and indie record store-only B-side, Culling of the Fold - a track that you must simply hear (and see performed live, as Meloy runs about the stage, simulating a hanging with the microphone and knocking equipment every which way) to believe; a grand four minute pop song, half frenetic, panicked waltz, and half joyous manifesto of a madman.
The Decemberists' Crane Wife is – hyperbole aside – the album that defines 2006 in music; there is little doubt that (unfortunately) the band will likely exist forever only in a niche market of indie nerds, academics, intellectuals and post-graduate English students, but this the greatest tragedy of all, for the almost prodigious output of the Decemberists is indicative that they are one of – if not the – best bands of the decade.
The Crane Wife is a resounding celebration of life. No matter how dark the words may get, the album s spirit is buoyed by boundless energy and an expa...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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