Photo: Press
"We know we belong to you," opines Colin Meloy on opening track 'The Singer Addresses His Audience' on his band's seventh studio album. "We know you've built your lives around us".
This bold intro describes all of those bands that inspire a fanatical marriage between the artist and fan. The Decemberists know better than most what it's like to be such a band.
With a career spanning nigh on 15 years and a catalogue of seven studio albums, the band have weaved their own tapestry to portray a world of murder, suicide, love, war, brotherhood, betrayal, all told through the prism of folklore, history, literature, poetry and beyond. They're much more than a band - they're an adventure in fiction. On album No.7, we explore only more magnificent territory.
Sonically, the album skirts around the alt-country sounds you've become familiar with, along with those flourishes of cinematic strings and tinges of the classic prog rock that they delved into on The Hazards Of Love. Just as with The King Is Dead and its predecessors, this is a fully-formed, three-dimensional atlas of music.
'Cavalry Captain' is a wistfully assured love song, vowing to be the "the remedy to your heart, the common collective". It's followed by 'Philomena' whose charming doo-wop sway is carried by Meloy channelling his idol with a bounty of Morrissey-isms. The result is a tragi-comic story of adolescent lust: "All that I wanted in the world, was just to live to see a naked girl".
The album's centrepiece is the love-lorn anthem and lead single 'Make You Better', but the peaks remain constant and there's never a lull - be it the dirge of 'Till The Water Is Long Gone', the bustling olde worlde biography of 'The Wrong Year' or the open-road Americana of 'Better Not Wake The Baby'.
Although 2015 may only be days old, this could be one of the finest albums you'll hear all year. The record's true highlight comes from penultimate track '12/17/12' - the track from which the album gets its name, and Meloy's reaction to President Obama's address to the nation following the Newton school shootings. It's an beautiful startling song, focused on the overriding message of valuing those close to you.
It's that conflict in song that shows what's so great about this album, and this band: never twee, but always using these idiosyncrasies as a vehicle for a universal truth. On What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World, what we have a real rarity: one of the most original acts of their generation, singing of love, loss and freedom in the fullest of voice, like no one else could.
The Decemberists release What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World on 19 January, 2015.
The Decemberists begin a European tour next month. Full dates are below. For tickets and information, visit here.
Wednesday, February 11 Dublin, Ireland Vicar Street
Friday, February 13 Glasgow, UK O2 Academy Glasgow
Saturday, February 14 Leeds, UK O2 Academy Leeds
Monday, February 16 Bristol, UK O2 Academy Bristol
Tuesday, February 17 Manchester, UK Manchester Academy
Wednesday, February 18 Birmingham, UK The Institute
Friday, February 20 Brighton, UK Brighton Dome Concert Hall
Saturday, February 21 London, UK O2 Academy Brixton
Monday, February 23 Amsterdam, Netherlands Paradiso
Tuesday, February 24 Brussels, Belguim AB
Wednesday, February 25 Nijmegen, Netherlands Doornroosje
Thursday, February 26 Berlin, Germany Astra Kulturhaus
Saturday, February 28 Zürich, Switzerland Kaufleuten
Sunday, March 1 Milan, Italy Magazzini Generali
