Album Reviews

Decemberist leader Colin Meloy has crafted a charming, hour long folk/ rock opera based on an ancient Japanese fable dealing with greed, loyalty and betrayal. A poor man finds a wounded crane, which he rescues and returns to good health. Shortly after releasing it back to the wild, a mysterious woman arrives at his home. The two fall in love and get married. To make ends meet, she agrees to weave silk garments to sell at the local market. Her only condition for doing the work is that he never watches her doing it.

Her exquisite weaving and fine textured material become extremely popular and the couple begin to live well. The husband’s greed overtakes him and he begins demanding more and more production from his wife.

Curiosity overtakes him and he peeks in to see how she manages to weave what many consider to be almost magical cloth. Much to his surprise, he finds a crane plucking its feathers and using them in the loom to weave the material. Upon seeing the greedy man, the crane flies away, never to return.

The music runs the gamut from melodic folk-rock to Genesis and/or Jethro Tull like prog-rock, but despite the genre-crossing, the entire album holds together thanks to Meloy’s gift for story-telling and his soothing vocalizing.

Death Cab For Cutie’s guitarist Chris Walla and singer Laura Veirs (whose albums are produced by co-producer Tucker Martine) contribute, with Veirs’ hiccupy vocals on “Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)” a standout on a double LP packed with highlights.

Hook-filled “easy access” melodies, thoughtful, well-crafted, literate lyrics and impressive, fine-sounding production, clearly pulled off without a big budget make this album, released last October, one of last’s years best and one that’s been spinning happily on my turntable for months. Better late than never, I guess.

Had this album been produced during the music biz’s heyday, when there were big budgets, big studios and high sonic expectations (because people actually cared and listened) it could have sounded spectacular instead of merely very good and more than competent. Highest recommendation.