Wednesday, February 22, 2012

The Listening Booth: Picaresque

 

Picaresque By The Decemberists (2005)

1.) The Infanta
     The First thing that grabs you is that horn. It sounds like nothing we've heard on the opening of a pop album since The Original Concept recording of Godspell. Then come those words: a spew of the most esoteric descriptive nouns in the English language, beautifully rhyming, describing the impressive parade of a child royal from Spain or Portugal. It is a hell of a first taste, of band and disc, and it was both for me. I had never heard Portland's finest until this song. Purchased because I liked the cover at a "going-out-of-business" sale at a Southwest Virginia Sam Goody, I thus discovered my favorite modern band.

2.) We Both Go Down Together
     Cliffs of Dover! The Anglophile in me is dying happy from this English imagery. The musicianship on display here is breathtaking, with the guest appearance of Petra Haden's violin and voice a welcome addition to these proceedings. This was the first Decemberists song I learned to play on the guitar in the summer of 2006, gleefully giddy that I could sing in Colin Meloy's range. Lover's suicide hasn't sounded this sweet since Shakespeare.

3.)  Eli, The Barrow Boy
    Oh God, this just doesn't stop being perfect. This could have been an ancient ballad covered by Joanie on her debut, yet it's new, it's heartbreaking, it's gorgeous...Indie rock has never sounded this pristine, this...Folkie! Eli's ghost haunts me 6 years later as it did the first time I heard his cry.

4.)  The Sporting Life
       I hadn't played on a sports team since I was 10 years old. I didn't expect to hear a song at 25 that would take me back to how much I hated it. Some of us just aren't meant to don sock stirrups. If this had been around in that year of Milli Vanilli and Warrant it would have been my anthem. Thankfully, I think I only disappointed my father because he coached the team (that I vocally wished would lose in the playoffs so I could go home for the rest of the summer), not because I was meant to hold a guitar instead of a glove. Listen to how good of a banjo player Chris Funk is. Multi-instrumentalist gold!

5.) The Bagman's Gambit
      Now Colin's getting all John Le Carre and Ian Flemming on our Lit class asses! This is when I began to see the prog hidden in Mr. Meloy's bag of tricks. We go through three tempo changes here and a mind-boggling bridge in seven wonderful minutes. No, they'll never catch the wily she-spy of this saga, but her heart is just as unchanged as our narrator's. I believe she sheds a tear in that motor car after their last meeting. Is it cool to write fan faction about deep cuts, cause I certainly am tempted!

6.) From My Own True Love (Lost At Sea)
    The ocean haunts these short stories. Here, we wait patiently with our heroine to see if her love is alive, never giving up hope. Still, the night is long and we cannot linger in this sadness for long. There are more hardships left to face on (and under) the rolling waves. The steady drum of former band mate Rachel Blumberg lead us to the next chapter.

7.) 16 Military Wives
      Oh dear me, this is a delicious confection! Never has the constant incompetence of our political system been so happily bounced along on a sea of horns, keyboard and harmonies( Well, until they released "Valerie Plame"!) I fell in love with Jenny Conlee's finger dexterity skills right here. Listen to those organ licks! The video gave even more guffaws to this tune's tongue-in-cheek brilliance.

8.) Engine Driver
     Colin references Pete Townshend, Jimmy Webb and Chaucer in this song, bringing disparate characters of poetry and prose together to form this narrative of overwhelming loneliness brought on by one's profession. Just when you think this progression of pieces couldn't possibly get any better, a jingle jangle of strings beckons you to the next page...

9.) On The Bus Mall
      ...where male prostitutes wait, to make you put aside your judgement, your disgust, and your pity. They want none of that. They simply want to show you their humanity. They want to explain how they came to be what they are. They want you to hold a candle while they say goodbye to a fallen comrade, even though they refuse to mourn his passing. You accept the wax offering, but a chill fills your body as you hear of their adventures, their trials and their survival. You didn't come to this revue thinking you would hear a tale like this. In the years I have rabidly followed these musicians and tellers of tales since this introduction, I have never been quite as sucker punched by honesty in fiction as I have with this story.

10.) The Mariner's Revenge Song
        Colin is well read, but he's well...um "Listened" as well. This is Weill's "Threepenny Opera" dissected, re-imagined and re-told in the belly of a whale. There is simply no one in music today who can write a song like this other than Colin Meloy. Even if his storytelling has become less "Picaresque" as of late, it still holds true to his gifts, bringing us gems that pay homage as well as equal this track's notoriety, skill and magic. Listen to how the music tells the tale just as well as the words. The ship being torn apart section needs no language when engulfed in sounds that exquisitely composed. And the coda?...Who knew these guys had such gypsy spirit in them?!?

11. Of Angels And Angles
      The show is ending. We need our final torch song, about death, about love, about life. It is more abstract than any of the previous tapestries, but it's metaphor of love as all-encompassing in its power could never be more clear. It's over before we even soak in all of its stunning message. The lights rise, and the theatre begins to empty. Yet, if this performance has floored you as it has myself, you're not ready for it to end. There's a repeat performance just a play button away and if we just sit here in the back, low in our seat, no one will notice if we watch again. It's not like the players gave us much choice here. We're bound to this display, and we always will be.




      

No comments:

Post a Comment