Not So Starry Eyed Anymore - "What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World" by The Decemb

The Decemberists have something of a reputation for grandiloquence and extravagance in their work, something which has perhaps overshadowed their innate ability to craft exquisite and emotive music. Do they ever get to the emotional core when they amass layers and layers of words, styles, stories, themes? Even a more musically direct piece such as June Hymn (from The KIng Is Dead) contains the following lyric: Here's a hymn to welcome in the day Heralding a summer's early sway And all the bulbs all coming in, To begin The thrushes bleating battle with the wrens Disrupts my reverie again Pegging clothing on the line Training jasmine how to vine Up the arbor to your door, And more and whilst it is undoubtably beautifully written it is also in a way quite hard work. What they have done with What A Terrible World, What A Beautful World is go, on all levels, for an approach which is resolutely more pop, more straightforward, more clean, and more direct - all of these things, things you would usually respond to with a hearty "Oh dear..." , make this record what it is. Clarity is the word of the day - the hooks are hookier, the melodies ever more ringing but at the end of it, it's the songs.....my, the songs! Having decided upon fewer grand concepts, unfussy arrangements, less folklore and history dominated themes, and less unalloyed whimsy for it's own sake, the songs are allowed space to crystallise more, to be more rounded and assured -right from the off, opening track The Singer Addresses His Audience sets a lyrical marker: We know, we know, we belong to ya We know you grew your arms around us And the hopes we wouldn't change But we had to change some You know, to belong to you This love song to idolatry from the band's point of view as opposed to the fan's has a gentle acoustic / strings opening, then the layers build up, extra voices come in, more strings, some brass and winds, then the drums creep up on you as the track becomes more strident over the rueful lines "to belong, to belong, to belong", ending with free form guitar squalling. Power and grandeur achieved by way of stealth, almost inveigling their way into the song. Cavalry Captain follows, and immediately contrasts with a power pop immediacy, with echoes something of both 80's stylings and the melodic ear of 60's Motown. Make You Better is another driving, strong song with a massive chorus evoking the FM Radio of 70's America (and more of the direct lyricism in lines like "And all I wanted was a sliver to call mine/ And all I wanted was a shimmer in your shine/To make me bright"). This sense of connection with past music comes in and out of the record - Philomena's piano opening sounds made for a 50's pop hit but again gives way to a swooning backing vocal which has 60's girl groups written all over it. They havent gone all FM and moon/june on us however, there are still plenty of moments of subtlety, of keening, longing, melancholic and bewitching music making. Lake Song has a lilting piano and acoustic guitar framework with more than an air of Nick Drake as it meditates through memory how ...we arise To curse those young suburban villains And their ill-begotten children from the lawn Come to me now And on this station wagon window Set the ghost of your two footprints That they might haunt me when you're gone And when the light broke dawn You were forever gone But I remember you: You were full You were full and sweet as honeydew Things take a small mis-step with the next track, Till The Water's All Gone, which is perfectly decent in and of itself, but a bit 'the same as the last one just not as good'. Maybe it simply suffers from being positioned where it is, and as a result it drags the record down a little. However, The Wrong Year picks it back up equally as quickly, with the band's more familiar folky side coming out for the first time with the use of fiddles and a smattering of light accordian, and this is continued with further introduction of harmoinca through Anti-Summersong. Another more offhand tune is Better Not Wake The Baby which indulges the band's love of a good old sea shanty, and as such is blessedly short. Carolina Low is among the highlights, with sparse, picked acoustics - it takes the tempo down again, but has the individual chararcter to avoid taking any of the album's overall momentum away. Easy Come, Easy Go is sturdy and purposeful, despite initially evoking the dusty twang of Johnny Cash, Americana, and road movies, and Mistral is stately and measured (while managing at the same time to incorporate a little bit of old timey bar-room piano). 12/17/12's title is a reference to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, or rather the date of a speech on it given by President Obama, where singer/writer Colin Meloy reflects on the difference between his personal state of contentment and the position of those affected by the incident (and gives the album it's title). It is futile to try and find an answer to which of the worlds we inhabit is more prevalent - the good and bad of the personal experience can never be expected to keep pace exactly with that of the wider world, but we can all be jerked violently away from one of these worlds when the other imposes itself upon us: What a gift, what a gift you can give me Here with my heart so whole, while others may be grieving Think of their grieving........ What a terrible world, what a beautiful world What a world you have made here The album ends with A Beginning Song (Oh, Colin, you just couldn't help yourself could you...), a more anthemic closer but in the same way the opening track built itself patiently, just holding back the pomp enough to keep a dignified head above water - it closes the album perfectly. I dont know if there was any deliberate attempt by the band to evoke heroes, or touchstones, or there's any sense of wishing to pay tribute to music history, but there is clearly something of that ilk there. Overall ....Beautiful World presents a band with a new found sense of coherence. That's not to say that I wouldn't like to see them make one of those ambitious, sprawling records again, but the current reining in of those tendencies has clearly had a profoundly positive effect on this record, and could herald a time when they can allow those two sides of themselves to co-exist in one album more harmoniously than before.