ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 17TH 2011
1YRON’S TOP 52 RECORDS OF 2011 RANKING: #21


The Hazards Of Love could’ve finished The Decemberists off once and for all. Similar to their 2006 album The Crane Wife (itself littered with songs in three parts, overarching literary narratives and linguistic tongue twisters), Hazards was the kind of album that should be commended for its bold endevours but was otherwise panned for its operatic bombast. That’s where The King Is Dead marked a decidely swift turn into something altogether more ordinary. This should not, however, be taken as a negative. Far from it. Recorded on Pendarvis Farm near Portland, Colin Meloy turned his attention from his well-noted fascination with British folk history to roots rock Americana whilst indulging the country aspect of folk rock that The Decemberists have always flirted with. By stripping things way back, The King Is Dead has afforded The Decemberists new life and the promise of further longevity by seizing the one thing that’s supposed to bring a band down: a retreat.


It’s fortunate that Meloy understood the error of his ways with Hazards’ gothic-fabled exaggerations. The King is littered with guitar and harmonica which supply a decidely country twang to one of the catchiest and most joyous indie rock records of the past few years. Opening track Don’t Carry It All is a rousing number that belies its intricate musical arrangements for one of the most indispensable vocal melodies in recent memory. Meloy reigns in the marvellous Gillian Welch on seven of the ten tracks here who underpins his self-confessed ‘donkey bray’. She remains for a further six tracks on The King, most interestingly on the songs through which Meloy’s vocals aren’t afraid to exceed the capacity of the song in question. Calamity Song feels designed to raise hands just as much as voices in what is perhaps the most blatant sing-along song of the band’s total output thus far. The same could be said for its successor Rise To Me, itself a more pared down acoustic track with vocals that soar and sear the open skies through which they’re outlining.

The King Is Dead remains musically uniform throughout its ten tracks, but the lyrical content can vary wildly. On the freewheeling Calamity Song, Meloy is stricken by the ‘war of the end times’ but not too sidetracked to throw in a line like, “Queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab.” The addition of January Hymn and June Hymn feel like essential counterparts, and in turn set off a time frame of the changing seasons around the songs which straddle them. Their positions as fifth and eighth on the record also provide easy access to navigate new territory for unassuming fans; if you can get these, the others will follow. Down By The Water is the song which has been described as The King Is Dead’s singular ‘flooding the senses’ experience, yet the two Hymns here are rich and vivid in their respective winter and summer imagery: the introspection of the former, head bowed and trudging through the snow, dispondent and dissimilar to the latter’s gregarious, wide-eyed content. Peter Buck shows up on three tracks here, a fact which ruffled some feathers from R.E.M. fans. If Down By The Water and Don’t Carry It All so sound like paeans to the late Georgia band, it’s the best R.E.M. material for fifteen years.


The King Is Dead succeeds on various levels where nothing since Picaresque did. Meloy took a step out of his comfort zone by finally relinquishing the tight grip around which his output for more than half a decade was faltering. Finally, The Decemberists aren’t dodging bullets but instead moving forward at their own pace. In the year since its release, they’ve thrown out a (less than stellar) EP in the form of Long Live The King and just announced the release of the upcoming two CD live package We All Raise Our Voices To The Air, perhaps a reaction to the fact that The King debuted at number one on the Billboard chart last year, continuing the indie phenomenon perpetuated by Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire’s chart triumphs the year prior. The final track on the record, Dear Avery, is achingly beautiful and uses melody and tempo in such a simplistic, genial way so as to hint at a hopeful direction for the band’s seventh major release. As Meloy and Welch join forces toward the song’s apex, it’s hard to deny the purity of a simple hook. It’s all that remains and all that matters at that one moment.