Castaways And Cutouts
by The Decemberists

From paladisiac TOP 100 COMMENTER 12/11/2011 04:09 | #32645 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

The decemberists' "castaways and cutouts" is a literary yarn of sea shanties and seaside romance gone awry full of parapets and petticoats. Literary alt-rock with a unique lyrical P.O.V. (vs all the other alt-rock out there) with songs like "here I dreamt I was an architect" (an architect who "built this balustrade / To keep you home, to keep you safe / From the outside world"), "july! July!" ("i say your uncle was a crooked french canadian / and he was gut-shot runnin gin ") and its propulsion towards the strange, and "grace cathedral hill" and its lackluster new year's ("Some way to greet the year: / your eyes all bright and brimmed with tears. / The pilgrims, pills and tourists here all sing / "Fifty-three bucks to buy a brand new halo." "). There's a variety of instrumentation backing colin's off-kilter, off-cove vocals. The other songs are pretty good...and dark, like "leslie anne levine", a dead child who sings "my name is Leslie Anne Levine / my mother birthed me down a dry ravine / my mother birthed me far too soon / born at nine and dead at noon", or like "a cautionary tale" about a mom who whores to feed her kid ("the next time she tries to feed you collard greens, remember what she does when you're asleep"). "cocoon" overstays its welcome, but it's the only one. 10 minute closer "california one / youth and beauty brigade" ("We're calling all bed wetters and ambulance chasers / Poor pick-pockets, bring 'em in / Come join the youth and beauty brigade") never dulls and hints at epic numbers to come. Fun album.

This is my favorite Decemberists album for its simplicity, compared to the mostly baroque albums that started with Picaresque. I feel like this album and the one that followed, Her Majesty the Decemberists, an inferior companion to this one, were their last sincere albums before they became a curdled starbucks chamber ensemble. (I'm especially allergic to "The Crane Wife," which I liked for about a year.) The songs are just good songs, with beautiful melodies and stories that don't work terribly hard.

The first two tracks are as good as anything off of the Crane Wife or Picaresque. The rest of the album is top-notch as well (even if "A Cautionary Song" isn't much more than the world's most hyper-literate "yo mamma" joke)

Certainly not the conventional choice when it comes to Decemberists albums, but I think that this is one of their most pleasing experiences. The later albums were more polished, but at the expense of charm.

Very nice debut album that shines with all kinds of potential that the group would expand upon in subsequent albums (though I see the viewpoint that their is a certain charm here that may be lost with some of the more bombastic later works). The two opening tracks are right up there with my favorites in their catalog.

Favorite tracks: Leslie Anne Levine, Here I Dreamt...
Also very nice and are growing on me: Odalisque, Grace Cathedral Hill, California One...