Headphones

Zack Wilkins, does he exist? Is he a dream? Perhaps he is the embodiment of all our noble spirits. Wait, no, I once saw him eat a pizza pocket he found under the couch. Nevermind.

For those who listen to music, there’s only one piece of physical equipment that truly reaches the state of ubiquity—that’s your headphones. Zunes are having a slight impact on the MP3 market share, and other people use some cheapo models instead of iPods, while others don’t have MP3 players at all, instead doing all their music-listening at home on a stereo setup. But even those people have headphones, if only so, once in a while, their spouses may hear themselves think. A lot of us hate our headphones and are pretty sure we wasted a lot of money. I thought I’d talk about the three pairs I use.

ZUNE PREMIUM HEADPHONES

When I got these, I did a little research and I found that Microsoft had mirrored Apple’s headphone offer—you’ve got your basic, shitty, fat wedges that come with every iPod or Zune, but you can spend a little extra and get the premiums; phones that actually fit into your ears and have bass. But since Microsoft had to deal with the fact that everybody and their grandma already had an iPod, they priced everything a bit cheaper, making their premium pairs $40, ten dollars less than the Apple equivalent. You were getting pretty much the exact same quality.

In the time since these headphones arrived, I hear that Apple has pimped out their technology a bit, putting microphones and remote controls in their headphones. Apple’s premium in-ear pairs are most likely superior now, but the catch is that they cost $80 instead of $50. If you’re unaware, The First Law of Headphones is that they will definitely break, sooner or later, and probably sooner. It’s a lot of money to spend on something that won’t last, and I’d still choose the Zune ones. Plus, look at the picture. They’re all cool and magnety.

But the thing about my Zune headphones is that they won’t seem to break. I’ve used them in the pouring rain and out in the Canadian blizzards. I’ve accidentally put heavy stuff on top of them, strained the cable, crushed them tight into my pocket, and have fallen asleep wearing them about three hundred times—that estimate is probably not hyperbole. Yes, the rope cables are frayed to shit. When I put these phones on in the dark, I feel out the difference between the left and right channels by seeing which side has the wires popping out (it’s the right channel). But they still work as well as the day I got them, and I haven’t started giving them the easy treatment yet. Awesome.

AKG K 271

“That’s a lot of numbers and letters, Zack! But what do they mean?” I don’t know, fancy style stuff, probably. Anyway, these weren’t cheap, a couple hundred dollars when they were new, I’m sure. I didn’t buy them; I just steal them from my dad every once in a while when I want to experience a music seizure. They’re discontinued now, and there are more advanced models. But I’ll say it right now; these phones offer more than you really need. I like to attempt to impress people with the way these phones automatically mute themselves when I take them off—supposedly for studio recording, so microphones won’t pick up any noise from them. Very sexy. My only complaint is that after wearing them for a few hours, some soreness can result from the way they push against your ears.

I’d like to say they pass the fragility test with flying colors, but I never take them anywhere, and the truth is I broke the cable once right at home—however, I don’t blame that on the headphones. I had them plugged into my computer and I tripped on the cord. It bent and snapped apart where it was plugged in… oh, and don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame the headphones, but I’m not blaming my own clumsiness, either. I’m blaming the design of the iMac. If things plugged in at the front, the cable would’ve just slipped out. Luckily, it was a detachable cable, so I just had to replace that instead of replacing the entire headphones.

I’d like to confront the fucking prima donna Apple designer who said, “We can’t have a headphone jack blemishing the front of this smooth, beautiful monolith of a desktop computer! Let’s put every hole on the back, so headphone cables have to contort awkwardly at an acute angle in order to be plugged in!” I’d awkwardly contort the hole on his backside, if you know what I mean. No, seriously, I need some help, what would that mean? That I would… rape him? I don’t want to rape him.

COMEDY OPTION – JECKLIN FLOAT MODEL ONES

These are the styles upon styles. You will get so many girls if you wear these things. Look at the men in that photo. Such is the posture of lady-getting. I cannot understand for the life of me why, when I googled these headphones, the first result was titled “fuglyphones owners unite”.

All joking aside, I would never leave my house with these ancient things on. There’s some hipster credibility to be harnessed with these, but I’m not sure I could pull it off. There are other factors as well; one, I’d need to buy an adapter to use them with an iPod or Zune. Two, they’re basically just speakers mounted to your face in a big ol’ square frame, so unless I want everybody who uses public transit to experience my music—and I don’t—I’d have to use them sparingly.

These things are decades old—I don’t know how old, but from the look of them I’d guess the 70s or the 80s—and somehow they still work, so they get some points for durability. I do have to shove a pen in there every once in a while to keep the speakers aligned properly, which I imagine to be quite the hilarious mental picture to anybody reading this. The sound quality is usually fine, but some things give it trouble these days. During really low sounds, the speakers in these headphones sometimes make a lot of reverberations, as if they were full of bees. Still, I use them all the time at home; unlike having buds in your ears or heavy-duty adjustable stereo phones, Jecklin Floats are essentially big foam hats, so they never create any discomfort. That is until I turn the volume up too loud and my ears begin to bleed. Which happened once.

Bold Saber

Keith McLean? No, he left days ago. He did leave this letter for you though!

Let me tell you about Bold Saber.

I first saw Bold Saber a few weeks ago at the EP release show for Rival Boys (another Toronto based band) and my life will never be the same. They walked onto the stage, in full glory, and I was immediately infatuated with them. The lead singer/guitarist (Drue Langlois) was accompanied by the drummer (Laura Rafferty) and he was wearing something that I can only describe as … a half of a kimono cross-bred with my perfect idea of a superhero’s costume. The guitarist had a bewildered and confused look on his face, and then he started to play.

Their musical style is difficult to describe. It’s a rocky, poppy, fun sounding mish mash of sounds that seem like they are being produced by a retired and bitter children’s show host. It’s almost as if Ween had a baby with Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, but it was raised by They Might Be Giants. It just has this strange and wonderful tone that makes me feel confused and happy in the strangest way.

At the back of the bar, at the merch’ tables was something quite magical. Among Bold Saber CDs, there were felt dolls and toys, and t-shirts with felt Bold Saber logos sewn onto them, all hand-made. It was by far the most work, and love, and care I had ever seen put into band merchandise in my life. They went beyond the cute indie appeal of having home-made CDs and posters and made fucking toys! Beautiful!

If you are in Toronto, this is a band to check out. They are artists, plain and simple. Their (awesome) music, is only the beginning of what this band is artistically (Drue’s website is over here, if you want to look at some of his artwork).

Needless to say I will be checking out their next show, and I will post my account of it, in a little more detail.

Bold Saber are my Beatles.

Office of Strategic Influence

Zack Wilkins loves what you’ve done with your hair. You HAVE to tell him how you did it!

I’ve always loved OSI. The band formed for its first album, unusually, by a lot of great Progminds playing in modern styles of industrial and electronic; utilizing shorter, fixed structures that some of the members were uncomfortable with, writing songs based around critical remarks about the US government. The name of the band itself is in reference to some unethical American propaganda-spreading project… but by time of the band’s second effort, they phased out most of the topical news-rage stuff and made something else: a fantastic album that was a lot more comfortable with its sound.

OSI only has two full-time members; Jim Matheos of the first Progressive Metal band Fates Warning, and Kevin Moore—if you’re familiar with him from his time as a Dream Theater keyboardist, you likely have no idea that he’s a very suitable vocalist on this project; he’s not much of a singer, but he’s got a handsome low voice. Outside the duo, there’s a tight musical circle where they turn to for guest talent—anybody who’s contributed anything to an OSI track has been somebody I’ve known elsewhere; from Dream Theater, from Gordian Knot, or a single degree of separation from Porcupine Tree. It’s comforting to know everybody in a supergroup, isn’t it?

OSI’s third album “Blood” comes out soon, but like just about everything these days, it leaked early. It’s the first without famous drummer Mike Portnoy, but it’s no huge loss to the project, as the replacement Gavin Harrison is exceptional and experienced himself. A bigger problem, I think, is that it lost the occasionally contributing bassist Joey Vera and didn’t replace him with anybody—there are only three musicians credited on instruments in this album. The previous effort, Free, had some awesome bass-driven tracks, and the album prior had great bass too through Sean Malone. Both men are absent from Blood.

For the most part, Blood sounds similar in style to Free. Which is a good thing. It unfortunately lacks some of Free’s variety. There’s no equivalent to the deliberating banjo piece which brought Free to a close. I’m hardly asking to see the same moves twice, but I’ve always appreciated the lack of consistency from track to track in this band. Blood has still got its high points… there’s plenty of dazzling electronic instrumentation and effects. Microburst Alert is a great example, which reminds me, there’s some speech sampling in a couple tracks, which was an old OSI tool for topical critique. Maybe they’re back to disparaging political stuff, which I’ve never cared for in my music. But I’m not grasping at a message in this one, so perhaps they just think it sounds cool? I’ve no clue. In Mircoburst Alert, the sampling is used effectively, so I wouldn’t penalize ‘em for it. There’s also some in We Come Undone, but I can’t tell what’s being said. If they’re pushing a message, at least they’re not pushing it aggressively.

Overall I’d probably place Blood below Free and above the original self-titled album. Even the first album had greatness in a number of tracks, but I really like the elements of style that developed in Free and have thankfully persisted into Blood.

However, I unequivocally propound to all readers that it would be wise to seek out all three albums. They’re such a welcome irregularity in the music world; celebrated virtuosic Progminds making forays into genres you’d not expect, and succeeding there. Did I mention that I was coining that portmanteau? “Progminds“? Well, I am.

Saxophillia

It’s a big old crazy musical world out there. Sometimes, if you don’t have a roadmap or one of those fancy GPS boxes, you can get lost and maybe never be found again. For example, the xylophone got lost when Frank Zappa died, and has been decorating milk cartons ever since. Hell, after a particularly bad drug trip the word “tonight” got lost back in 1987, effectively killing the wild ride that was hair metal.

You’re going to rock me when?

There has been another instrument that has been wandering around on the edges of the musical map for some time now. It is called The Saxophone, and it’s golden glory has certainly seen better days. It’s not like the saxophone was ever going to take the place of the guitar (although you certainly CAN shred on it, all guy covering Buckethead on youtube and everything), but I am becoming increasingly of the opinion that there needs to be more sax happening around here.

What? Examples you say? Why certainly! Let’s start at the very beginning of music:

This is David Bowie’s Soul Love, off the only album anyone actually needs, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. This song has beautiful saxophone in it, delivering a sort of feel that couldn’t be replicated by any other instument. The sax solo is quiet but powerful, moving but dignified. Follow it through its twists and turns, see where it leads. It’s hard to ignore, and it is even harder to argue against. The sax exists to give this song a gorgeous, heart-felt exclamation mark.

This is another beautiful example of the saxophone giving a rock song an amazing boost. This song is by Electric Six, a band normally relying on sweet disco riffs and catchy dance rock guitar awesome to get their fans moving. For this song though they take a different approach, and the result is this song about Napolean that will actually make you cry if you let it (of course you wouldn’t do that though, being the manly man that you are, right? right). The saxophone swells up into the solo and becomes the voice of the song, emulating the mix of conflicting emotions in the song’s narrator while at the time being entirely badass.

The inspiration for my recent saxophillia (google search confirms that I just invented this word, fuck yeah) was introduced to me by fellow blogman Zack. They are a progressive rock band from various European locales called The Tangent, and I’ve been listening heavily to their debut album The Music That Died Alone. Now, this is pretty standard (albeit remarkably excellent) progressive rock: long compositions, sweeping storylines, virtuotic instrumentation, yadda yadda yadda. But what struck me about The Tangent was that they added a permanent saxophonist — David Jackson of Ven Der Graaf Generator fame — to supplement their already-stacked lineup of musicians. And the results are ridiculously positive. The saxophone adds a remarkable texture to the music and I am excited to acquire some more of this band’s work to see where they go with it.

Surely there are other examples of rock bands incorporating the sexy sounds of the sax into their repetoire. Surely a whole generation of people listening to Us and Them by Pink Floyd could produce more saxophone than this, right?

Right?

C’mon Billy, Kick it into OVERDRIVE!

A few days ago I decided, perhaps under the spell of a witch or gremlin, that I had way too much money and needed to go buy something fun. I went to my local music shop and approached the man. “Excuse me,” I said, handsomely, “I play the bass and I want to be either louder or more annoying. What would you recommend?” He gave me this:

This is the Boss Bass Overdrive box. Using it, I can sound all metal, or I can just sound louder and crazier. Naturally, I have been using it annoy the hell out of my housemates by continuously playing the bass to Hysteria by Muse for hours. It took forever to actually find settings on the thing that sounded even remotely usable though. I spent my first day with it thinking “oh god, either this is a piece of garbage or I have some sort of serious, undiagnosed handicap”. I sounded abysmal.

Luckily the little manual that came with the box gives some hints for people like me who are new to this whole thing. It had examples of common settings, like Mega Distortion, Slapping Rhythm, Super Booster, and Warm Fuzz. A couple were sorta dissapointing for me; my bass and my amp are pretty crazy when it comes to tone customization and EQ, and some of the effects offered by the overdrive box I could do before on my own. The sweet distortion-style effect was new though. Once I figured out the correct way to set it up and started playing, I found I could pull off a few pretty cool sounds. I especially found that the distortion effect supplemented some of my chordal play, which I use frequently. Other stuff I do sounds TERRIBLE however, so it took a while to alter my playing and get myself sounding decent.

I’ve noticed that my usual style of play isn’t exactly conducive to the whole distortion thing. Normally I’m pretty funky and smooth, and adding distortion doesn’t really make that any better (although it certainly was a fun novelty for a while). For a bit I considered taking it back, getting something more along my lines of play. But I’ve ultimately decided to keep it. Throughout my bass-playing career (which consists of one show, which was 50% a disaster and 50% hilarious), I’ve been choosing my gear on a basis of versatility, and keeping this little box just gives me another slew of tricks to pull out of my sleeve should the situation ever arise. Maybe someday I will be in a post-rock band or Lordi or something.

Ahh… a man can dream…

Gentle Giant

This post is brought to you by Zack Wilkins, the letter K, and viewers like you.

When my old friend and contemporary Ben “Skullfucker” Nicholls called me up this morning and invited me to write pieces for his latest visionary endeavor—a periodical column about music, published on the World Wide Web, I was thrilled. What Skullfucker had done, you see, was given me the voice I had been looking for since I had worn out my own on the street, screaming at civilians and handing out floppy diskettes with the first 1440 kilobytes of various highly-compressed Gentle Giant songs. With this new internet web-logging medium, I could spread my own personal gospels with the click of a button—well, a few clicks; that, and the pressing of several hundred computer keys. But I don’t have to stand outside in the icy Canadian winds with a splintering signboard. I don’t have to circumvent the restraining orders either. What’s keeping me from sharing my pure, unadulterated love of music with the world now? Nothing but Kapelson’s cruel, cruel editing process.

Gentle Giant was this band from back in the 70s, and they’re not an easy band to describe. Maybe I could say “King Crimson meets unwashed fourteenth-century lute-playing bards”, and sometimes that would suffice to explain their style. Not always. Wikipedia has a nice section on their sound, but it uses a lot of big words that I don’t understand.

Gentle Giant’s drummer: a true gentleman.

Oh, I’ll still make the attempt to describe why they’re so unique and special, even if my perspective is lackluster as a dilettante; one who, in my case, can’t play any instruments, and has little technical musical knowledge or vocabulary. After all, music isn’t about creating stuff that’s complex but terrible-sounding to its audience. Not at all.

Gentle Giant skillfully revived instruments and techniques that hadn’t been used in like 600 years; except perhaps at a very dedicated renaissance fair. Certainly not in modern music. Thematically, their songs are compelling. And when the band isn’t rapidly swapping which members are singing and harmonizing, jolting you with irregular but not-awkward changes of pace, they’re doing the same thing with their guitars. Their live album is a great example; they don’t play any song the same way as you’ve grown to expect.

The band’s story is a bit tragic. Over time, I’ve developed a simple way to explain where it all went wrong; a method I’m rather fond of. The first Gentle Giant album—which was great as a late-60s progressive rock album if you enjoy those, but occurred before the band’s signature sound had developed, what I’d call the golden age—had a song called “Funny Ways”. In it the following is spoken:

My ways are strange
They’ll never change

Gentle Giant hadn’t reached the apex of their strangeness with the first album, that’s for sure. To illustrate that, let’s skip ahead to a song from their fourth album, Octopus:

It hurts him to think
that she is hurting her
by him being hurt to think
that she thinks he is hurt
by making her feel guilty
at hurting him by her thinking
she wants him to want her

Read as a single sentence, it makes sense. It’s from the song “Knots”, and the lyrics are more-or-less lifted straight from the R.D. Laing book of the same name. The book is a great example of layered human thought processes—”what if she knows that I know”—except that there are dozens of layers instead of two. As an interesting aside, if you’ve got a copy of the Watchmen graphic novel, flip to Chapter 11, Page 9. If not, don’t worry about it.

Let’s see what’s going on by the time of the 9th album, The Missing Piece:

I betcha thought we couldn’t do it
and if you did we wouldn’t try
I betcha thought we couldn’t do it
but if we didn’t we would die

This was 1977, right when punk was getting huge. The song is in a semi-punk rock style… and when they say “we couldn’t do it”, what they mean is “we couldn’t play a mainstream genre”. And “if we didn’t, we would die”? If you put what they’re saying into context, and you’re not bawling your fucking eyes out, you’re probably a robot. It’s a fucking tragedy.

Civilian, the 11th and final album. Man, I stared at this thing for a fucking eternity before noticing the letters in red.

Everything leading up to it was still Gentle Giant’s pure quality period, but The Missing Piece marked the end. Perhaps the saddest part of all is that I thought Civilian (1980) was actually kind of good. I think it was entering New Wave territory, perhaps like Duran Duran or something, not that I know anything about Duran Duran or New Wave. But maybe there’s some parallel universe out there, where Gentle Giant was able to adapt to the new decade, and their label stopped pressuring them, so they were able to make their creative impact on pop-rock as they had done for prog-rock a decade prior. But I understand that the band members completely hated their lives by that point, so… maybe not. Since they broke up in such a strange moment for their sound, all I can do is speculate.

The Zune Social

In February 2008 my iPod started breaking. It was a sad time, and I wept many tears for my loss. I tried to hold on, using whatever means I could to patch up the wounds and squeeze a little more life out of the machine. It was all for naught though; by July, my iPod was dead.

Somehow, months and months went by before I replaced it with a 120 GB Zune. Why a zune? Well, it did everything my iPod did, and more, it came with a truckload of accessories, and it was the same price. So hey, why not. Unfortunately, I forgot to factor in that I am now stuck using the Zune software to play my music. Now, the program is pretty nice. Not what I am used to, but it looks nice and it does what I need it to do. My only gripe was that I can’t use Last.FM with it.

For those of you who don’t know, Last.fm is a service that records all the tracks you play, and provides access to a multitude of useful tools for using this data. It will even get a feel for what music you like and suggest new bands for you. It’s a really awesome site, and I can’t use it anymore.

What I do get to use is the Zune Social website, a site that records all my tracks played, and then lays out exactly 0.1% of this information in a nice way. True, it is a pretty site, and it is fine to see my top 8 bands and my top 15 listened-to songs. But come on; it’s obvious that my entire listening history is somewhere in that database, why not provide tools for at least browsing through it?

That was one of my favourite things about Last.fm: I could look at my whole listening history. I could make a sweet timeline of my habits and tastes. I could see my music evolve. Now, this appeals to me because I am a bit of a stats whore. I realize that the Zune Social isn’t marketed for people like me. Who does it appeal to? I have no idea. It doesn’t exactly provide a wealth of information, because really, who’s musical palette can be summed up in 8 bands and 15 songs?

Of Montreal Gets Me All Hot And Bothered

Today’s post is brought to you by Andrew deKoning, King of Iceland and all around tough guy.

Today I would like to discuss one of my favourite bands in the current music scene, Of Montreal. I first got into them about 3 years ago through a friend and fell in love with their whimsical style. Then, I watched as they gradually turned to a more electric pop style, and I for one couldn’t be more excited to see a band that truly tries to give us something new with each release. In this case, Skeletal Lamping is no different. It’s funky, it’s catchy, it’s dirty, and it makes me want to get down on all the ladies.

Skeletal Lamping

While only fifteen tracks, this album feels like so much more due its habit of only keeping an idea for a minute or two before completely switching it up. For example, the opening track “Nonpareil of Favour” beings with a very catchy, light tune but doesn’t hold it for long before, without warning, brings in a heavy pounding rhythm of the complete opposite tone. This sudden change makes you wonder, how else are they going to surprise me later on? The answer to that is, they find their ways. It jumps all over the place, much like sentient pogo-stick gone wild.

Emotionally, it ranges from the sombre and beautiful piano tune “Touched Something Hollow” to the upbeat, poppy, and nostalgic “An Eluardian Instance” (Yes, they still have their penchant for wacky titles) instantly after.

Every song is insanely catchy and I’ll often find myself singing along to it (“I want to be your pleasure puss, I want to know what it’s like to be inside you” are especially good lyrics for getting you weird looks), maybe moving my feet in a rhythmic fashion, maybe doing a pelvic thrust here and there. You know the deal. But don’t let that fool you; this album does keep the Of Montreal tradition of making their songs eclectic enough to sometimes make them hard to get into. Their use of strange noises to formulate beats and sometimes melodies certainly does not go unnoticed; a common complaint I’ve heard from some listeners is that to them it comes off as a sonic mess. However, I’ve found that by listening to these many layers of background noise you can find surprising and interesting little melodies that certainly enrich the songs.

Lyrically this album is sexually promiscuous, but also innocent at times. One thing for sure is that it certainly is honest. It explores the Id of our minds and tries to show us everything we are trying to repress. As Kevin Barnes stated

“This record is my attempt to bring all of my puzzling, contradicting, disturbing, humorous…fantasies, ruminations and observations to the surface, so that I can better dissect and understand their reason for being in my head.”

And that it certainly does. It’s like Barnes is challenging us. He describes to us these dirty thoughts as if saying “I have thought these thoughts and you have too, you just won’t admit it.”

Finally, it doesn’t indulge the listener. It doesn’t give you what you want all time and I can respect that. It finds a catchy beat, maybe a sweet four part harmony but it never repeats itself often. It jumps from one idea to the next with each one equally interesting but also leaving you wanting to go back to something earlier just to hear it again.

Overall, it’s good. Really good. It combines brutally honest lyrics with funky bass, eccentric beats and style that is so infectious it should be outlawed. If you are a purchaser of music you should definitely look into this album.

The Black Mages

While browsing Wikipedia, I stumbled across the page on Nobuo Uematsu, composer of the vast majority of the music for the Final Fantasy series of video games. Now, I love the various Final Fantasy games I have played, and one of the reasons is most certainly the music. “Hooray for Nobuo,” I am thinking, “you are the man.” It turns out though that I had not even scratched the surface of just how “The Man” he is.

Reading further, I discover that in 2003 he formed a band called The Black Mages, a rock band that does rock/japanametal arrangements of Final Fantasy music. And Nobuo plays the keys. Naturally, this is rad as all hell.

I can’t exactly tell what it is about Japanese music that makes it so fun to listen to. Maybe it is just how exaggerative it can be at times. Most bands that I have listened to seem to take one thing and just focus on it past the point a sensible person would dare go. It’s like having a thousand Dragonforces in every genre, all trying to one-up each other. It’s great.

This ridiculousness, combined with the fact that 80% of Japanese music sounds like video game music anyways, meant that I was instantly excited about The Black Mages. And they did not disappoint. Rocking riffs, sweet solos, epic organ, hilarious occasional singing, and the best imitation of funky MIDI bass ever, all combined into one thrilling act. Their music is retardedly fun to listen to, especially when you already know most of the tunes. It is interesting to see the different ways Nobuo takes his original music, it’s a fascinating transformation.

I would highly suggest listening to some of this stuff if you like Japan, Final Fantasy, or simply fun rock music. Here’s a “musical video” of them playing a song from Final Fantasy VII. If you’ve ever played this game (which I assume you have, since you are alive and it is 2009), you’ll recognize it. Look at how weinery they all look! The guys doing the guitar solos are especially weinery, but it’s okay because they are playing the guitar. Nobuo is the one playing the electric organ, watch how much he rocks out.

Conclusion: I love Japan.

The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love

Welcome the debut post on the Millionth Music Blog. Today I will be discussing an album which I was mighty looking forward to. It is a concept album from a favourite band of mine, The Decemberists. Now, these guys are, how you say, grandiose. You could say they are “straight up fancy mothers”. Their blend of interesting melodies, eerie sonic landscapes, delightfully baroque (read: old style romantic) lyrics and unique themes are a breath of fresh air in their genre. Their last effort, The Crane Wife, was a grand effort. Mystical. Powerful. Playful, yet haunting. For their new album, chief songsmith Colin Meloy decided to write a play instead. A play called The Hazards of Love.

The Hazards of Love

The play is about a girl named Margaret who, for some reason, decides that walking into a deep scary magical scary forest would be a good idea. While there, she falls in love with a forest weirdo who is probably magic, and they get it on. She returns to her village sexually contented. Later, she finds out she is pregnant with a probably magic weirdo baby. Naturally, she runs back into the forest calling for her love so they can raise the kid together and live forever in harmony. Of course, the Queen of the Forest and a murderer decide to ruin her day and antics ensue. As for the ending, well, you can listen to the album and find out.

The album is not without its charm. Present once again is Colin Meloy’s impeccable ability to use romantic, old-style language to just say the most badass things ever. I suppose I have a soft spot for the gentlemanly lingo of the victorian age, which this album has in spades. The storytelling is also pretty good: it’s subtle when it needs to be, but descriptive enough to properly convey the story. Like any story driven piece though, it does fall into some annoying parts of unrelenting narration, which can be difficult to ignore.

Musically the album is a rollercoaster. It has spectacular moments, forgettable lulls, as well as frighteningly abrasive parts that are weird and uncharacteristic of the band’s trademark folky sound. I see an interesting departure on this album: some songs have this dark, unsettling quality to them that I still find weird to be hearing from this band. Its not a bad thing, in all truth it adds to the atmosphere of the album and drives the story. But still, I normally listen to The Decemberists for their uplifting, “sweet summers spent rolling in the grass” style of music, and I have this terrible feeling that they may lose this quality if they keep this up. Oh well, all things change.

The one thing I notice immediately about this album is that it lacks any points of great definition. I’ve heard the album 5 or 6 times now, and there are few melodies here that I’ve really taken away. None of the songs stand out in any serious way. With their last 2 albums I found myself humming and singing their tunes for days, certain songs virtually being put on repeat on my various music players. They were infectious. This album fades into the background though. I really do like a few of the songs, there are great tracks on this album for sure. I suppose the album just isn’t as hook-driven as previous ones.

Overall, I like the album. It is a good album, it’s hard to argue that. But it seems to me like this could be the beginning of the end of the Decemberists I came to love. Who knows though; maybe once Mr. Meloy emerges from his forest he will go back to playing his pan pipe and singing about being delightful.

Verdict: Good album, but forgettable. Sort of a cool new sound, but I was sort of expecting the old album. Might pick it up if I see it for cheapsies.
Favourite Track: Won’t Want For Love (Margaret in the Taiga)