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Since Andyfest asked about the album, we might as well have a thread. Here's the extended version of my review which has appeared or will appear in Venus:
After giving journalists three years to find the perfect word to describe their music and watching the resulting volleys of colorful adjectives and hyphenates (“baroque,” “histrionic,” “alt-pirate”) fall short, The Decemberists have taken pity and, in a gesture of characteristic dictional mastery, provided that ideal descriptor as the title of their new album: Picaresque. True to their word, the Portland minstrels deliver 11 songs more or less “depicting in realistic, often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social degree living by his or her wits in a corrupt society.”
The album’s initial momentum follows 2004’s The Tain EP more closely than Her Majesty, storming in on royal pachyderms to the sound of pounding drums and an urgent Spanish melody with “The Infanta”. The “multitude of coronets” blowing “from all atop the parapets” will announce to fans of The Decemberists’ previous albums that whatever Picaresque means, it does not mean a sea change in the band’s methods. They maintain their anachronistic feel through varied instrumentation and, their greatest assets, Colin Meloy’s eloquent songwriting and careful, earnest vocals.
By no means, however, have these saucy revisionist historians allowed their style to stagnate – Picaresque is their most cohesive album to date, perhaps as a result of consistent touring. The songs have the mark of effortless collaboration, and the multi-instrumental talents of each member are brought to bear more effectively than ever, a fact driven home during their exuberant live performances. Meloy also explores some new techniques. On “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”, he takes the sea shanty style of “A Cautionary Song” (from Castaways and Cutouts) and expands upon it, producing an engrossing nine-minute epic. “The Sporting Life” allows the most unapologetic glimpse at the band’s influences to date, owing more than a rhythm and a bass line to The Smiths (and more specifically to “This Charming Man”), and in turn to Iggy Pop. Meloy even tries his hand at politics on the spirited, bouncy “Sixteen Military Wives.” The song’s criticisms of war, American arrogance and the media aren’t much more articulate than Team America’s “America, Fuck Yeah” or Morrissey’s embarrassing 2004 cheeseburger protest, “America Is Not the World,” but damned if it isn’t catchy.
Strong as it is, Picaresque falters briefly in places. “From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)” is maybe the weakest song on a Decemberists LP, bearing the superficial elements of their style without the wit or narrative quality. Rachel Blumberg, whose pretty but fragile voice otherwise complements Meloy’s well, doesn’t seem any more ready for the lead when “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” switches to a female narrative point of view than she did on Her Majesty’s “Chimbley Sweep.” Caveats aside, however, Picaresque is a jaunty step forward for our roguish heroes from the West.
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