The Decemberists

Posted Jul 11, 2011 at 11:19 AM in General, Band Information

Life as a musician means continual evolution. Over the course of a career, any band worth paying attention to will pursue a sound, a direction, until it triggers a different idea and they're chasing some other distant dream. With their sixth album, The King Is Dead, The Decemberists illustrate the power that comes from this kind of creative call-and-response. Anchored by lead singer Colin Meloy's literate songwriting and ornamented with incomparable musicianship, the band appeared on the pop music radar after the release and warm critical reception of 2005's Picaresque. Each album since has garnered more attention and charted higher, including King, which peaked at #1 on the U.S. Billboard charts.

Colin Meloy started working on the kind of project he had long been thinking about-a set more stripped-down, country based songs. The mostly-acoustic arrangements on The King Is Dead showcase the ways in which The Decemberists sound just as glorious in simple, concise compositions as they do on the elaborate strucutres that have defined their work for years. In some ways The King Is Dead represents Meloy's own musical journey coming full circle. "I guess I've kind of come back to a lot of the more American music that got me going in the first place. Someitmes I kind of miss the epic-ness of the other albums, but it's nice to get all of the information across in three minutes. It's like going from reading a novel to reading a bunch of short stories."

The Portland, OR. based group The Decemberists will be performing at Britt on July 19, at 7:30 pm to get your tickets call 773-6077 or go to www.brittfest.org.

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