Despite their dark subject material, they’ve never been a group to take themselves too seriously.
If their last release ‘What a Beautiful World’ showcased their most accomplished songwriting,
The Decemberists also found they were slipping into habits and getting too comfortable.
Enter ‘
Severed’, the lead single from ‘I’ll Be Your Girl’. It’s a brooding track that prowls in on a throbbing bassline and is patrolled my menacing synths and venomous guitar lines, as Meloy plays the demagogue in a thinly-veiled barb at ‘45’: “I alone am the answer, I alone can make wrongs right.” Uprooting themselves from their usual studio in Portland, Oregon for their eighth full-length, The D’s are getting weird to keep themselves interested.
Opener ‘
Once In My Life’ begins with a familiar acoustic strum, yielding to a circular chorus and bubbling keyboards. Meloy’s lyrical approach has rarely been so sparse, with scarcely a charabanc or palanquin in sight. These new songs instead find a riff, a beat or a lyric and work with it. It’s a far cry from the sprawling multi-part operas of earlier albums.
‘
Your Ghost’ rides in on a galloping beat and where once brass might have erupted the band takes a detour to the disco, with groovy guitars and Abba-esque backing vocals. It isn’t all new ground though; the upbeat ‘
Everything Is Awful’ is a classic Decemberists singalong, retrofitted with chunky guitars. They even throwback to 2006 with the sprawling multi-movement ‘Rusalka, Rusalka’, leaping from droning synths to plucked banjo to prog-rock riffage.
