By The DecemberistsCustomer Review: God, how I love the Decemberists!! Just listening to their albums is like watching the sail of a pirate ship rear up on the horizon. It's magnificent and terrible all at once, guaranteed to send Victorian women in overlaced corsets into fitful swoons, and send men reaching for their dueling pistols! It's like the drum of oars in water or the bodice-ripping cover of a Romance novel about lust on the high seas!!
"Picaresque" is perhaps the most perfect Decemeberists' album to date. It still retains the familiar conceits of sea chanties and Victorian melodrama, typified by songs like "From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)" and "Eli, the Barrowboy," a beautiful folk song about an evidently consumptive barrowboy who sells "coals and marigolds." But it expands the Decemberists nautical palette to include a track like "The Sporting Life", a whimsical Belle & Sebastian-esque song about a young inept athlete who dreads going out for sports at school.
Even better is "Sixteen Military Wives." This is utterly unlike ANYTHING the Decemberists have ever attempted, a perfect anti-war pop song with the catchiest chorus this side of the Beatles. It's implaccable beat and minor key verses trip along effortlessly to a military rhythm that soars into a sunny singalong chorus, complete with honking saxophones and tambourines. Don't be put off too much by its anti-war message, however; it's equally indictive of celebrity culture and brainless anchormen. And frankly, I think you'll be dancing too much to be overly concerned.
A final highlight is "The Infanta", a cacophony of thunderous drums and appropriately picaresque lyrics that rolls on as implacable and unyielding as a troop of janissaries swarming over the bulwarks of a Spanish galleon. And it is also the only song in the history of music that manages to rhyme "falderal" and "chaparral." For that achievement alone, "Picaresque" earns its 5 stars. An album I cannot recommend highly enough.
- Digital Music Album - MP3 Download
- Artist: The Decemberists
- Manufacturer: Kill Rock Stars
| Release Date: | 2005-03-22 | | Label: | Kill Rock Stars |
Individual tracks from this album: This item is offered by for $9.99. Click here for availability and purchase information. Related Products:
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