The Decemberists
Picaresque
The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy sure knows his way around the dictionary. His lyrics are filled with plenty of words that would give a spelling bee champion pause. Though the tales of pirates and prostitutes that fill his band’s third album, “Picaresque,” would be more at home in a classic book of children’s adventure stories than in a doctoral thesis. Needless to say, in “The Infanta,” “16 Military Wives” and “The Mariner’s Revenge Song,” the words usually supercede the melodies. But it’s in the music that the group’s sense of humor finally seeps out. After all, it’s hard enough to listen to the Eastern European folk code of “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” without grinning like a fool, so one must assume the band itself must find its mix of old-country folk and sea shanties just as amusing.
Best track: “The Mariner’s Revenge Song,” an eight-minute epic featuring call-and-response vocals and enough maritime metaphors to make Melville proud.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale ([email protected]) and Kris Karnopp ([email protected])