The Crane Wife

 After the folk-rock, baroque-spiced quintet of indie poppers got bold enough to step out of the shadow of the small labels and aim a signal flare at the sky above the major labels, the first giant to spot the light was Capitol. That’s how the intro could begin to what I listened to with reverence and sensitivity, and after the first spin I figured you’ll be hearing precious little thunder and negative criticism today. The Decemberists and their latest album before the follow-up reportedly announced for 2009, The Crane Wife, blow past every expectation from the very first chords and lyrics, bathing your mind in superlatives and keeping your ears fully occupied. This time the treat is on offer to a wider crowd, not just to the more exploratory, curious types who appreciate lesser-known indie fare. On that front I can assure you that The Decemberists, even after three indie albums too small for their mystical ambitions, haven’t gone rotten in some indigestible mainstream way. It’s simply a pivotal moment in the Decemberists’ history.

The album’s main inspiration is a Japanese folk tale, in which a crane (the bird, my dears, not the machine for lifting heavy loads), an arrow, a lovely woman and a cathartic chain of events all get woven together. Fittingly, right from the start, with the song ‘The Crane Wife 3′, the album picks up exactly where Picaresque left off. The basic tool is a simple folk melody that grows into a conglomerate of sound a couple of decibels louder, one that plenty of rockers could be proud of. The intro reminds me of Counting Crows, only this time, instead of wailing, aimed at the goal of landscape painting, the kind that might shake you up with Neutral Milk Hotel. It’s genius and feeling that Meloy and company fill out with guitar, piano, gentle bass and fitting drums, then add a xylophone, and the intro slips easily into your ear. The continuation is somewhat more epic and harder to wrap your head around, if you can’t manage listening to a single song for 12 minutes.

‘The Island’ is a triptych of images made up of ‘Come And See’, ‘The Landlord’s Daughter’ and ‘You’ll Not Feel The Drowning’. The intro is almost off-beat jazzy. Or let’s say it’s more loose, bluesy. It conjures up an image of fractal shimmers of seventies rock. For inspiration you could look to R.E.M. and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The bayonets get sharpened and the fleet sails off to the final showdown. The thread running from the start and the opening discourse of the invitation to listen to the pulse of ‘Come And See’ all the way to the drowning of the triptych’s closing part is never broken or interrupted by anything, really. Images weave themselves before your eyes and in the temple of your heart you can fill in the missing parts of the fresco of all frescoes. It’s about hope, love, sacrifice and death.

War and love are Meloy’s personal champions of thematic infusions of pure storytelling. After the finale of the first epic salvo comes a moment of R.E.M.-style playfulness, a lovely duet between Meloy and Seattle collaborator and part-time Decemberist Laura Veirs, who sounds convincing and nobly full. True, what we hear this time is lighter and more pop-flavored, but ‘Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)’ outshines many an idiocy of the soapy-light, airheaded pop outpourings of modern pop. A dichotomy of war and peace, love and mourning, that all but conjures a little woman in front of the house, talking in her mind to her husband who’s fighting the battles of the Civil War, while not knowing that he’s only a ghost and her dear one already fell in the war. Hope and loving longing to the very last.

The album’s single, which went off to break new ground on its own, ‘O Valencia!’ is an indie pop gem, but in some tragic way it doesn’t move me all that much. What “sits” better with me is the Hammond caressing and almost funky rhythm of ‘The Perfect Crime’, which with ominous precision gets you moving and swaying to a story about the perfect murder, a crime of passion that left no room for mistakes. Deep Purple-style intermezzos and sexy drums melt into the ever more recognizable and absolutely omnipresent sound of Meloy’s vocals. So addictive that you catch the smell of gunpowder and thunder, which isn’t the sound of this world, even though it’s trying hard to be.

The slightly distorted guitars are this time topped off with delay echo and the blare of war trumpets from the misty shores of Peter Pan’s home. And with bated breath we wait for the tide that finally, in the chorus, spits its share of fresh mud and rocks onto the devastated shore of the subconscious. ‘Shankill Butchers’ is a homage to all the British ballads about butchers and murderers, and alongside ‘Summersong’ it sounds, in its harmonious, sleepy carnivalism, closer to how The Decemberists sounded in the past. Though ‘Summersong’ is undoubtedly the more playful, optimism-soaked whisper of the past in this quadrant of the Decemberists universe.

The epic continuation of the first song is then rounded out with the overtures ‘The Crane Wife 1 & 2’ filling in previously unfilled gaps. It’s the swan song of the album’s first listen, and Meloy, over drumming and restrained trembling, strings together the word “heart” again and again. Restrained and resonant as hell. A gem among gems, conjuring up a restorative blueprint of an in medias res moment you couldn’t avoid or resist right from the very start. And only then do you get rewarded with a big finale that offers sunshine and the aroma of lightness – ‘Sons And Daughters’. The Decemberists sound like a band that truly knows where the next step is headed, and they won’t be satisfied until you too chew your way through to the big finale. And you’ve got quite a few reasons to.

As said: the album further strengthens and improves on what we heard before, in their utterly characteristic manner of inspired passion and verbal richness. The willingness and gravity of label logic have melted into full oneness, and The Crane Wife lines up the already familiar set of songs about good-for-nothing criminals, vagabonds, soldiers, child-killers and lovers, who spin off a crystal-clear dance of eroticism with a flame-fanned tango. Passion and an intellectual drive for more. The tango is just a metaphor for this perfect harmonization of stimuli on all your senses, since you can feel a whiff of history right on the tip of your tongue. Meloy weaves a veil of made-up stories about an ordinary bunch of folk rockers who, besides folk, serve you blues, ominous drowsiness, rocker loudness, progressive inventiveness and epic sprawl. The album has it all and more – the main glue is Meloy’s songwriting, which sketches character traits that tell stories. Everyman does what his earthly mission is. Thieves steal, lovers love until their premature, tragic deaths, soldiers fight on the plains for threatened homes so that, ironically, with the blood of their enemies they can bring the smell of freedom and peace back home. And in this vividness and musical perfectionism The Crane Wife deserves a pedestal among the greats – right alongside Neutral Milk Hotel, R.E.M., Dylan and other storytellers par excellence. Despite the fact that there’s no direct sharpness, this is a record that’s always worth listening to with both ears. Verdict: way more than just a big thumbs up!