Decemberists still have magic touch

By: Tim Hollan

Posted: 4/17/09

Artist: The Decemberists
Album: Hazards of Love
Indie Rock
Grade: A-

One should approach the Decemberists new album with trepidation. When they said they were going to do a bookish rock opera, that meant that they were staying away from their strengths while playing up their weaknesses. Simply put, the Decemberists doing a rock opera could easily be an album full of "The Tain" rather than "On the Bus Mall," pretentious exercises in telling epic pastoral stories with lyrics straight from a bad musical rather than engaging character sketches.

Like any concept album, or at least the good ones, the story is unimportant. Seriously. Who pays attention to or even knows the story of Tommy or American Idiot? We remember the songs, but we don't care about what happens. The story is some abstract tale about Margaret who apparently angers some queen or something. It's incredibly difficult to follow and really is better of ignoring in favor of the songs.

Like their past album, The Crane Wife, the center piece of the album is a multipart track called "The Hazards of Love." The four songs show off a heavy folk rock influence, throwing medieval rhythms into the mix, while throwing in heavy metal riffs here and there, serving as a guide to the sounds and themes that the band employs on this album. These songs are possibly the best on the record since these tend not to advance the plot, but rather reinforce points.

Paradoxically, like most rock operas, the best songs are the ones that provide either a detailed sketch of a character or a single scene. For instance, the "Rake's Song" provides an incredibly interesting character sketch of a man who gets into a marriage and is overcome with children, whom he murders because he can't take care of them because his wife died in childbirth. It's darkly humorous, and clever without being forced or overly pretentious. Unfortunately, the songs more focused on the story, the lyrics are clumsy, inorganic, and stilted.

Fortunately, when the lyrics don't work, the music picks up the slack. The band really shows off their chops. "The Queen's Rebuke" features what may be the best guitar solo found in a Decemberist record laid over what may some of the heaviest music they ever laid down, reminiscent of British heavy metal and blues.

Ultimately, the Decemberists provide us with a good record, but they don't give us any gems like "O Valencia!" or "July, July!". The songs are very good, but they're never genius or catchy. Although, it is their most consistent album, never hitting the lows that peppered their previous releases. Compared to their previous work, the record just doesn't stand up on its own. It's swallowed by the quality of their previous works. However, removed from the context of The Crane Wife or the Bridesmaid single series, it is an album with many charms that you will learn to appreciate and love, without any of the weaknesses of their previous work, but also never giving us a song that could stand up against their best songs.

But, if you're new to the band, check out their earlier work first before you give their new one a try, because you will end up here, I'd just rather you see some of the better sights first.

Artist: Black Joe Lewis
Album: Tell 'Em What Your Name Is
R&B, Soul
Grade: A

In a world that's gone completely digital, where music is created in a studio setting with layers upon layers of processed sound, where anything done by a human being is corrected and manipulated to a sheen, where talent comes next to good looks and aerobic abilities, where live concerts are essentially the artist playing a tape for you while they parade around stage, in a world where music has become so impersonal and loveless, to hear a love letter to Motown and Stax record from a group of real musicians instantly makes this stand out.

Black Joe Lewis, with his backing band the Honey Bears, could easily fit next to your James Brown records, and you might not know that it was released in 2009. The band is tight, as guitarists trade lines with the horn players, and the drummer keeps a mean rhythm, and the bassist provides a backbone to the jam. The songs feature heavy doses of humor, adding to the jubilant music. The production stays hands off, only capturing the lively performances. The songs are short and brief, and clearly refined to the most exciting version they could possibly be. The lyrics are either forgettable, which is perfectly fine for an album where the focus is on the rhythm and the music, or humorous, which adds some magic and spice to tracks like "Get Yo Shit."

Although brief, only lasting 30 minutes, "Tell 'Em What Your Name Is" will liven up any party for years to come and will always give you a reason to make a brief return.