knowncutter's Full Review: The Hazards of Love [PA] * by The Decemberists
A warning to the reader: If you adamantly desire to abstain from theatricality in your music - you've never liked Queen and you hate, hate, hate Pink Floyd's The Wall - The Decemberists' latest and fifth album, The Hazards of Love, is simply not for you. A rock opera, The Hazards of Love fleshes out the Decemberists' burgeoning story-telling complex into a cohesive full-album narrative. Over 17 songs, lead Decemberist Colin Meloy and a group of guest vocalists sing us the tragic love tale of characters William and Margaret. In typical Decemberists' fashion, this means a fanciful rendering of a land time forgot. There's villainy. There's a shape-shifting tiger. And there's a Forest Queen who rocks so hard you'll nearly forget you're listening to the notoriously precocious folk-pop of the Decemberists. In short, it's the most ambitious album The Decemberists' have ever attempted.
For those of us who enjoy such absurdly ambitious projects, The Hazards of Love is a true pleasure. The Decemberists have never before produced such a cohesive, thrilling album's worth of material. To grant the complex story arc a sort of connectedness, the album plays like one long, flowing song, divided into 17 segments like chapters of a novel. That The Decemberists were able to pull off this cohesion musically, without sounding repetitive or boring, is something of a marvel. For example, "The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)" concludes with a cacophonic squall of eviscerated orchestration which somehow blends beautifully into the poignant pedal-steel country twang of album closer "The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)." The end result is easily the most impressive achievement in the band's consistently excellent catalogue.
Of course, impressive doesn't necessarily equate with terrific, and upon first listen The Hazards of Love might underwhelm. In fact, there's hardly a track here that resembles the sort of instantly gratifying pop the Decemberists have proven capable of with tracks like "July, July!" or "16 Military Wives." The closest thing to a radio-ready hit is the malicious stomp of "The Rake's Song," with its triumphant, gang-tackled refrain of "Alright, alright!" Even this song, though, is helped immensely within its proper location on the album. Alone it's just kind of catchy; in context it's a deliciously twisted tale of an evil father murdering his own children.
All the excitement of a unified lyrical odyssey aside, the big news on The Hazards of Love is the Decemberists' embrace of heavy-metal sludge. Most will surely chuckle at the use of the term heavy-metal in a Decemberists review, but the once dainty, twee-pop weaklings have found their libido somewhere over the course of making this album. Both songs featuring the show-stealing, powerful vocals of My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden, also feature the sort of distorted, blazing guitar work I never thought I'd hear on a Decemberists record. In particular, "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid" announces the Forest Queen's presence with a bloodthirsty, menacing riff that sears from the album like an escape of blazing lava.
All in all, The Hazards of Love is a complete work that takes time to appreciate. It's time fans of the band will surely be willing to dedicate, but for every one else, don't let negative rock opera connotations prevent you from enjoying one of the better albums released so far in 2009. The fairy tale Meloy has created here is actually comprehensible (as opposed to, say, the convoluted narratives" of The Who's Quadrophenia or David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust) and even if it wasn't, the melodies throughout the album are well worth your time. It's rare that any rock record is as unified in purpose and sound as The Hazards of Love and the Decemberists have never sounded better.
Track Listing1. Prelude2. The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)3. A Bower Scene4. Won t Want for Love (Marg...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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