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. To frontman
Colin Meloy, in some ways The King is Dead represents his own musical journey coming full circle. “Over
the last eleven years or so, I feel like I’ve been mining mostly English
traditions for influence,” he says. “I guess I’ve kind of come back to a lot of
the more American music that got me going in the first place.”
Twelve members strong and big on ambitions, Typhoon's sound is heavy on
instrumentation and shades of sound, while the songwriting, “Prove(s)
(principal song writer for Typhoon) Kyle Morton’s smart, emotive
lyricism doesn’t need an orchestra behind it to stand out,” according
to Willamette Week’s Casey Jarman.
