Decemberists Burnout

The punishment fit the crime, it seems.

i'm assuming you don't agree, hence why it's declared "shitty"

as for newborn child songs. sure , exception to the rule. but all that miltary wives bullshit, which makes up the majority of his music, I'm sure he'd done that all

I like some of those guys' songs. Some people do not. This is fine. Saying "oh noes the Decemberists are not real pirates therefore I hate them" is a ridiculous argument.

as for your point, does anyone say you HAVE to be a pirate in order to write about them? no I think he's just discussing how he really enjoyed the music, but then in the long run, for reasons explained it left him cold. as it has appeared to do with many of the commenters.

I don't think he's making any generalizations. just his own observations. why must such raging defense be taken as if he's spewing the word of god on decemberists.

You started a thread asking for peoples' thoughts on an article. Some people wrote their thoughts. You didn't like those thoughts. I am not worried about what this guy wrote, I just think that people who complain about music being "cold and calculated", or "pretentious", or "self-indulgent" are mostly idiots.

what are you suggesting is the alternative to finding music these things. just don't say anything at all? give it more time, you'll find the warmth and sincerity someday?

????

yes , brainscans, that's what I'm doing.

can't YOU find something cold and calculating without actually saying the person is????
I don't follow your logic. you are making some rather random leaps here ....

My personal opinion is that the musician's sincerity has no bearing on my enjoyment of a piece of music. Because I've got no way of ascertaining whether the musician is sincere or not, and because even if I did have, is it a question of them being sincere when they wrote the piece, or performed it? Do they have to be sincere every time they play a song? If there's something about a song I like, I'm interested in why I like it. I've got no idea how the people writing it or playing it feel, and I don't care. It seems strange, to me, to spend time worrying about whether somebody else means it, maaaan.

And what the fuck is a pseudo-tune? Am I just imagining that I'm listening to a tune? Now that's confusing.

Like “alternative,” the “experimental” designation was one created by somebody somewhere in the mainstream so they could discredit artists who were truly doing something different than whatever was commonly considered to be straight-ahead.

That strikes me as being just about the exact opposite of the truth.

PART DEUX

It was then that I first began to ponder: is any band any good to begin with if my father is capable of ruining them for me?

And therein lies the key to the Decemberist's cold & calculating Sufjan Illinois research project. How can any album/artist be cool if my dad likes it? Sorry, Ryan (goodhodgkins), but I am not buying your pseudo-melody theory (if we put enough monkeys into a room with typewriters, they could write the entire Beatle catalog). Do you mean that they use folk melodies that derive from sea-chanties (I seem to remember some pretty outrageously good versions of What Would You Do with a Drunken Sailor)?

I agree with noodle_vague that assessing an artists intention is damn nigh impossible, and even if the artist declares an intention, the final product is never completely the creation of the artist but one of the artist and the listener, and yes, your mileage may vary.

BTW, I dl'd two of the Decemberists' works because of hype linnking them to New Pornographers--who I mildly liked, and Sufjan, who I mildly liked. I don't make a connection with the Decemberists either, but it's not because of any ill-thought out theory of the artist's invention process. Ryan doesn't like the Decemberists? Fine. It's because using 17th century (more likely 19th century if he'd bother to check) maritime vocabulary? that's is so arbitrary as to render his blog as pretentious and irrelevant. Like I say, he got his pants in a wad because he can't relate to his father liking some of the same music. Grow up.

I was merely exploring my burnout of The Decemberists and not necessarily trying to make any definitive claims there.

What I've come to realize is that I'm the one who changed, not The Decemberists, and that's by no means THEIR fault. But it also doesn't invalidate any complaints of mine. The best music is that which stays with us no matter what stage of life we're in. I'm at a point in my life where I no longer need their music and can't really stand it. I wasn't trying to be inflamatory there, but I WAS trying to provoke civil discussion. I think I've done that, for the most part.

I don't agree here. Let me start by saying I've been really into the Decemberists for a few years. I saw Colin Meloy on his first solo tour and I've seen the band four times, I've recorded covers of their songs. I moderate a section of their official message board. So I'm not trying to be a hater here.

But I think Picaresque was a big let-down. I think the band has changed. Not fundamentally, but in focus. The preponderance of songs weren't always so emotionally detached. You used to have songs like Clementine, Cocoon, Red Right Ankle, Grace Cathedral Hill, California One/YABB, The Gymnast, etc. Songs that were abstract and indirect and evocative. And then you'd have your character sketch/trope manipulation songs, like Legionnaire's Lament, Leslie Ann Levine, Chimbley Sweep, etc. But the majortiy of the songs were of the former type, and the songs of the latter type were clever and well executed and didn't overstay their welcome.

I think some of that changed on Picaresque. Between the way that record sounds and the impression I've gotten from the last few live shows (the last two were nearly a year apart and almost exactly the same, right down to stage banter), they seem to be getting a bit caught up in the spectacle, and in some ways are close to becoming a caricature of themselves.

I really hope their next record is as good as Castaways and Her Majesty, but I'll just have to wait and see.

And I hate Mariner's Revenge Song. I liked it when it was called The Chimbley Sweep and it was 1/3 as long.

Sufjan & the Dcmbrists both had gigantic press pushes/buzz moments last year; not many bands can escape that kind constant-wash-cycle attention without a lot of fans just getting sick to death of 'em, especially when the bands in question aren't trading on pop hooks or trad charisma but on concepts. Try watching The Iceman Cometh once a week all summer long and see if it still seems totally intense around August 31st, right? I put it to you, man

Quoted for posterity.

But wasn't their debut Castaways?

It was their first LP; they had previously released the 5 Songs EP.

As for the whole "sincerity" angle, I guess it's a matter of personal preference, but I've never felt like I needed to directly relate to something to enjoy it (if that were the case, I wouldn't listen to any hip-hop... or at least not any good hip-hop).

While I'd count "Grace Cathedral Hill," "Red, Right Ankle," and "Angel, Won't You Call Me" among my favourite Decemberist tunes, I don't see how you can deny that "My Mother Was A Chinese Trapeze Artist" or "The Bagman's Gambit" are some of Meloy's very best songs.

I guess my biggest pique was that artists are somehow phony if they use methods of invention for their writing that includes research. And that in the case of the Decemberists, trying to sound authentic was somehow also false.

Again, I tried to get into the Decemberists and failed, so that part isn't the issue. I think you have a valid contention that the music sounds cold and calculating, but I resist blaming that on research or use of authentic language or folk melodies. Whether it is obvious or not, a great deal of music--certainly not just rock--builds off of familiar tunes and airs and I think that most popular music succeeds when it does strike us as familiar.

A related example--I'm not much of a fan of the Beatles, but on a CBS news feature yesterday, Paul McCartney demonstrated how the melody for "BlackBird" came from a Bach piece that he & Lennon & Harrison would use as a practice piece, though they--his words not mind--played it slightly wrong. McCartney elided a few notes, making them glissandos instead and came up with Blackbird.

Any number of jazz musicians have taken appart tunes, transcribed them and then changed them by some mathematical or geometric form to come up with a new tune. If it works, it works--if it doens't it doesn't, but not because it is calculated.

2. I am his dad, or the close equivalent, except the records I listened to a lot were Her Majesty and 5 Songs (which my kid had burned onto one CD). I got tired of Picaresque pretty quickly, for approximately the reasons Steve Goldberg expresses. I do like Engine Driver, though, and I think Infanta is one of the funniest songs ever about one's friends' babies. When Meloy's stuff works, it's because he's walking a tightrope between a core of personal, emotional response and exaggerated literary archness. When he loses his balance, stuff falls.

3. On the other hand, I got tired of Illinoise about 1/3 of the way through the first time I heard it. Chicago is a nice pop song, and Stevens also uses a broad instrumental palette sometimes, but otherwise I see practically no overlap between The Decemberists and Stevens. Stevens is earnest; Meloy is Wilde.

4. On his last tour, Meloy had a funny bit introducing "My Mother Was A Chinese Trapeze Artist". Something like, "This next song is completely autobiographical. Like James Frey, however, I have altered a few names and incidental details, without in any way affecting the core of truth."

5. And for God's sake, yes, Meloy's basic frame of reference is Victorian melodrama, not the 17th century. And sea shanties are work songs, not meandering quasioperatic ballads like Mariner's Revenge. Which would have been fine if technology made it disappear from the album after you heard it once or twice.

When Meloy's stuff works, it's because he's walking a tightrope between a core of personal, emotional response and exaggerated literary archness. When he loses his balance, stuff falls.

OTM. I think there are a lot of ways in which the early albums can be described as "balanced," and then that balance was kind of lost on Picaresque. And I certainly don't think a song has to be about something true or authentic to be great. That's one of the major songwriting lessons I've taken from The Decemberists. I do think Bagman's Gambit is very good, and On the Busmall is Picaresque's one truly excellent song.

I think Sufjan is different in a lot of ways, though. Sufjan's arrangements are pretty damn impressive. For me it was very much a "come for the music, stay for the lyrics" kind of thing with him. And I think The Decemberists had some great arrangements on Her Majesty - particularly a song like The Gymnast, with its subtle piano, steel guitar, string quartet, and vocal harmonies. But the arrangements on Picaresque feel anything but subtle - to me it all sounds like a big overcompressed mish-mosh, especially on songs like The Infanta, Sixteen Military Wives, and We Both Go Down Together.

Picaresque feels like the band getting a little too comfortable in this little niche they've stumbled upon. Fortunately for them, it's a somewhat unique position in the current indie pop scene, and so it's rather easy to identify and brand and market (pseudo-archaic literary-folk story songs!), and it seems that large audiences and Capitol records think it's good. It certainly gets them away from the NMH comparisons which they got stuck with a lot early on, and which they began to resent, in my opinion. But it definitely seems to lose something that made great songs like Grace Cathedral Hill and Red Right Ankle.

And the post-Picaresque songs I've heard (Valencia, Shankhill Butchers, the baby song [blech]), don't do much to reassure me, but I'm still hoping to be pleasantly surprised by The Crane Wife.

I read some comments from Colin about the Crane Wife, though, and it sounds like it could be a very interesting listen. Perhaps I was reading too much into his words, but he seemed very intrigued - maybe even a bit moved - by the legend.

*cries*