By Clare Shreve
Despite the familiar sounds of accordions, eerily told vignettes and archaic vocabulary, The Decemberists have a whole new sound on their fifth album, "The Hazards of Love."
The album encompasses a single story full of villains, maidens, sex, love and shockingly enough, infanticide.
The story, as a whole, is gloomy but remains exciting and alluring. According to the band's official Web site, "The Hazards of Love" tells the story of Margaret, who is "ravaged by a shape-shifting animal; her lover, William; a forest queen; and a cold-blooded, lascivious rake." The life of Margaret is torturous but increasingly entertaining with each new horror in her "love" life.
In a song titled "The Rake's Song," singer and songwriter Colin Meloy sings from the viewpoint of a rake, a 17th century term for a Casanova type of man, who settled down at 21 years of age, immediately followed by the birth of four of his children he recognizes his life as "a curse."
In one of the most uncomfortable songs on the album, The Decemberists manage to move themselves away from songs of the wayfaring sailors that seemed dark enough to enter a completely new and sinister area in songwriting. Their instrumentation, too, takes a turn for the darker elements.
"There's an odd bond between the music of the British folk revival and classic metal," Meloy said on the band's Web site.
He seems to implement this bond in all of The Decemberists' albums. "The Hazards of Love" is no exception to this pattern, save for a little more metal than before.
Here, The Decemberists bring a harsher sound to their instrumentation, complete with electric guitar solos backed up by a throbbing beat and some tambourine work, like in the song, "The Queen's Rebuke / The Crossing."
Very rarely in this album is a cheerful chord plucked, which is quite different from their other albums.
Even among songs of defilement, murdering butchers and men trapped inside the belly of a whale on past albums, The Decemberists included songs of living the carefree life in an abandoned barn or true love, although tragic, still a common theme.
Here, it's very hard to get away from the darkness of the lyrics, but in songs like "Isn't It a Lovely Night?" the soft duet gives the album a little glimmer of hope; almost immediately squashed by the epic tour de force of "The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid."
This song begins softly enough with what sounds like a harpsichord, but it builds up to a straining Meloy singing to his mother. Acting like several songs in one, the mother takes over shortly after. It brings in "My Brightest Diamond's" Shara Worden's powerful female voice that sounds hauntingly vampiric.
There are songs like "Interlude" that truly allow the listener to rest and recoup after the gloom inflicting songs prior to it. "Interlude" is a soft and delicate instrumental song that exists purely for the listener; it's a "breather" song.
It remains astounding that Colin Meloy, front man, can still play the part of various characters.
While his classically quivering voice remains the same, the force of his voice and the words he sings change with each character he plays. But it is not just Meloy who gets a chance to stretch his vocal chords, Worden and "Lavender Diamond's" Becky Stark, join him as the lead female vocals.
Worried that the band might be producing the same album over and over, complete with references to petticoats and peddling waifs, '"The Decemberists" have risen to the occasion by reinventing their lyricism into something just as enjoyable as taking "whisky by the pint."
The theatricality of the band has remained the same; the album is just as entertaining as "Her Majesty" or "Castaways and Cutouts."
The songs are best listened to in order, following the arc of the story and the instrumentation flows from one song to another almost undetected.
Despite the darkness of the album on the whole, the songs remain entertaining and at times even upbeat.
But this Portland band has not lost its folksy vibes completely. There are still remnants of a banjo's twang and lovely duets scattered about. But banjos aside, the album is ultimately about the hazards of love.
