Picaresque
by The Decemberists

From paladisiac TOP 100 COMMENTER 12/10/2011 03:50 | #32567 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Picaresque is my favorite album from the Decemberists. It starts off with a muted tribal horn i often blast before the drums beat in with Colin narrating the premise of "the infanta": "Here she comes in her palanquin / on the back of an elephant / on a bed made of linen and sequins and silk / all astride on her father's line / with the king and his concubines / and her nurse with her pitchers of liquors and milk / and we'll all come praise the infanta". The charging literature of the song is finely offset by the quieter, pensive, recharging bridge. The lyrics on "infanta" are the best decemberists lyrics yet (and i love intelligent lyrics), replete with high-point scrabble words like "palanquin", "pachyderm" and "folderol", tied with another picaresque tune, the epic "mariner's revenge song", probably my favorite decemberists songs of all-time. "mariner's" starts in flashback mode "in this belly of a whale" recalling a "rake and a rastabout" who moved in on the narrator's mother when he was 14 "Leaving my mother A poor consumptive wretch" with a killer-yet-frail chorus delivered by Jenny wisping "Find him, bind him / Tie him to a pole and break / His fingers to splinters / Drag him to a hole until he / Wakes up naked / Clawing at the ceiling / Of his grave". The narrator later was hired in a priory "But never once in the employ / Of these holy men / Did I ever once turn my mind / From the thought of revenge" hearing about a captain known for "wanton cruelty", the man who left his mother destitute in death. There's even a pensive instrumental passage as the narrator contemplates commiting a "wicked deed" (to kill that captain) which nails the sound of the old sea (as only the Decemberists can!). Then "And then that fateful night / We had you in our sight / After twenty months at sea / Your starboard flank abeam / I was getting my muskets clean / When came this rumbling from beneath" as the whale rose from beneath which chews up all but our two antagonists. Marvelous storytelling and delivery including an energized ending. All tunes have the feel of tales of centuries ago, classic stories charles dickens or herman melville would be proud of, full of motorcars and muskets ablaze. "we both go down together" is a tale of a couple who commit suicide knowing their families will never allow them together ("Meet me on my vast veranda / My sweet untouched Miranda / and while the seagulls are crying / we fall but our souls are flying"). That Colin can make such wordsmithy, sea shanties so catchy and endearing is a testament to his intelligence and ability to tap the human condition. Like on "eli the barrow boy", the soliloquied epitaph of a loved one, singing "Would I could afford to buy my love a fine robe / Made of gold and silk Arabian thread / But she is dead and gone and lying in a pine grove / And I must push my barrow all the day". Or the humorously playful "the sporting life": "I fell on the playing field / the work of an errant heel / the din of the crowd and the loud commotion / went deafening silence and stopped emotion" . The instrumentation on this album kicks arse too, from the fiddle on "together" to the organ and horns on "16 military wives" to the accordion on "mariner's revenge song". The slower numbers work well too, from the crime scene buildup of "the bagman's gambit" ("On the lam from the law / on the steps of the capitol / you shot a plainclothes cop on the ten o'clock") and literally lost love "from my own true love (lost at sea)", to what i feel is Colin's first love song "of angels and angles". Beautiful acoustic guitar prefaces simply-felt lines like "there are angels in your angles, there's a low moon caught in your tangles", the perfectly understated closer to offset the literary bombast of "infanta". The sentiment is as saddening-sweet on "the engine driver" with a chorus pleading "and if you don't love me, let me go", and even on the lyrically-simple-life-of-a-male-prostitute of "on a bus mall" illustrating "here in our hovel we fuse like a family, / But I will not mourn for you. / So take off your makeup / And pocket your pills away. / We're kings among runaways / On the bus mall." . There's even a jab at politics in "16 military wives": "Cheer them on to their rivals / Cause America can, and America can't say no / And America does, if America says it's so".

From buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 03/06/2019 18:58 | #233155 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Missoula, Montana, native and main Decemberists songwriter Colin Meloy is one of the great musical storytellers of our time, and over time I've come to embrace his faux-Brit singing style as an enhancement of his gifts rather than an affectation. The devastating and literally haunting "Eli, the Barrow Boy" is emblematic of what makes this album especially great, as it displays a richness and depth of storytelling not quite fully realized in the Decemberists' earlier work. The band's popularity these days, particularly here in Meloy's home state of Montana, means that I'll likely never see them in a small venue, which is a shame because the complexity and nuance of these performances really demands a venue as intimate as the songs.

From Defago 09/29/2012 21:19 | #51444 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Don't know how haven't I found this before! Great indie/folk/prog. Best track is definitely The Mariner's Revenge Song. Both the instrumental break and the incalzando outro give me goosebumps, not to mention the outstanding storytelling.

This album is a stunning blend of lyrical genius and amazing musical performances. The stories that are woven out on every single song is brilliant and gives the listener so much to be able to explore and look into. The storytelling is amazing and keeps me coming back for more. As well as this, there is the music itself which is amazing and fits the lyrics perfectly. I never feel disconnected from the album for the whole run time and there is a lot of layers to explore in the instrumentation as well. While the music may not be as experimental as The Crane Wife, I do believe it is more consistent and there is no weak cuts on this record. Also, I love the vocal performance and think it is extremely unique and delivers the lyrics excellently. Overall, I think this is the artists best work but The Crane Wife is a very close second and both are a must listen for people who love music.

Engine Driver, On the Bus Mall, and The Mariner's Revenge Song might just be my three favorite Decemberists songs, so to have them strung together here is pretty special. I am also a big fan of Of Angels and Angles, so the ending to this album is just sublime for me.

This is the strongest Decemberists album lyrically, with some beautifully evocative storytelling as others have noted. The Crane Wife may be a bit more interesting musically.

If I had to find fault, the tone and lyrical content of The Sporting Life and 16 Military Wives don't quite fit the rest of the album in my opinion. Not bad songs, but to me they feel out of place here for some reason.