The Decemberists
What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
Reviewed by: Max Miller
The Decemberists found success by carving a specific niche for themselves. Lead vocalist/songwriter Colin Meloy’s obsession with the 19th century, translated into archaically verbose, yet charming storytelling, distinguished them from other indie folk revivalists of the 2000s. This idiosyncratic approach evolved and bloomed over four fairly solid full-lengths, culminating in The Crane Wife, commonly thought of as the band’s creative peak. They followed this run with The Hazards of Love, a somewhat bloated (yet still pretty great) prog-rock opera that seemed to mark the heights of the band’s bombastic allure. The next move was 2011’s The King is Dead, which abruptly found the Decemberists shedding their usual brand of old-timey-ness for a different sort of Americana that wound up sounding more like a calculated averaging of every band to ever have a song played on NPR.
For their seventh full-length, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, Meloy and co. seem to be caught between replicating the past that granted them acclaim and forging onwards toward a future where they’re free to change up their approach at the cost of the factors that make the Decemberists the Decemberists. Opening cut “The Singer Addresses His Audience” directly confronts this complicated bond between band and fans. It’s a tender moment, somewhat marred by a weird throwaway reference to Axe shampoo.
Elsewhere, however, the band seems to be at the top of its usual game. Early single “Philomena” opens with perhaps the most quintessentially Meloy line on the whole album: “O, Philomena/ You in a tawdry gown/ Lean to your window/ Let slip a ribbon down.” (Although — Surprise! — the rest of the song is about oral sex in a manner so blatant it would make most ‘80s hair metal bands blush.) “Better Not Wake the Baby” gives us less than two minutes of barroom acoustic guitar and accordion singalong, making its addition feel perfunctory.
And “perfunctory” might be the biggest overall complaint one might have about the album. While it straddles the line between the new direction of The King is Dead and their classic material, it often feels like the band is going through the motions at this point. With 14 tracks, What a … World starts to drag toward the end. Ultimately, your patience with the album will depend on how dedicated you are to the Decemberists, which is basically what the group has acknowledged from the outset. It’s like Meloy says: “We had to change some, you know, to belong to you.”
Rating: Listenable
