Music Review: The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love
Sometimes a concept can be bigger than the people who convey it. Since signing to major label Capitol, The Decemberists have brought two fanciful (and highly conceptual) folk tales to life.
Frontman Colin Meloy - much maligned for purveying "thesaurus rock" and much beloved for making it tastefully palatable - could care less about the classifications, petty or otherwise. He's only concerned with the story. On The Hazards of Love, Colin and his swarthy, seasoned shipmates have recklessly run ashore, found some friends, and are colonizing the forests.
Much akin to their past works, but drastically cross-hatched, Hazards incorporates elements of "California One/Youth & Beauty Brigade", the pastiche prog themes from The Tain, and the solemnity of preceding Crane Wife. It's unmistakably Decemberists, and undeniably new. With this record, unlike past Meloy-led expeditions - which upon repeated listening leaves a campy residue - is a maturation of sorts; a culmination.
Opening number "Prelude" bleeds with organs into a crisp, revealing "Hazards of Love 1" where Colin's character shape-shifts from a fawn into a suitor for the angelic Margaret (voiced by Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark). Their courtship is contested by the searing Forest Queen (played by My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden). Eventually, as in all their morbid tales, the couple succumbs; they're held captive by the angry river and they drown with a kiss. ("We Both Go Down Together" ring a bell?)
But the real glory is the insular drama of the centerpiece tracks in Hazards. Worden's Forest Queen reigns supreme with vocal strength such that her wrath is well remembered long after (see "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid" and "The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing"). A bitter widower kills his children to become a bachelor and the youngsters come back to haunt him in "Hazards of Love 3", recalling their own deaths like something out of an Edward Gorey illustration.
But the oak in the center of Hazard's woods is Margaret's "Won't Want for Love". It's the perfect example of what The Decemberists have become - Meloy and Chris Funk riffing like they're being measured against late-era Zeppelin, John Moen keeping an effectual, but even-tempered beat resembling Mick Fleetwood, and Jen Conlee hammering keys with a Pink Floyd-like precision.
It's ironic that with such a devoted fan base and such an unalienable, literary-obsessed style, that The Decemberists has arrived at what might be their career's magnum opus by loosening the resolutely-gripped reins on their sound and allowing guest performers to shape their destiny along with them.
Stark's recurring chorus "I may swoon from all this swaying/but I won't want for love" is the revelation here; you can't help but adore the strange path that The Decemberists have carved. And if Hazards of Love is but a landmark in their journey, the end point will be unimaginably grand.
