The Decemberists

Picaresque (Kill Rock Stars)

You know those snow globes at airport gift shops? Any song from Picaresque fits inside. Where 2003’s Her Majesty the Decemberists unfurled tales of royalty, and debut Castaways and Cutouts talked of the sea, Picaresque drafts a whole new cast of characters just as colorful. “I am a writer, a writer of fictions,” sings Colin Meloy on “The Engine Driver.” Yes, he is; he’s also an English major with a penchant for words like “palanquin,” “folderol,” and “gadabout.” Throughout Picaresque, stories of virginal young girls riding elephants, runaway hustlers, drowned barrow boys, murder inside the belly of a whale, and on-the-run spies continually unfold. “The Sporting Life” bounces with Morrissey-ian failure and dark humor, while the sweet sway of “We Both Go Down Together” makes Meloy’s implorings (“Meet me on my vast veranda, my sweet untouched Miranda”) a bit sour. On “16 Military Wives,” Meloy spits: “Cheer them on to their rivals, because America can and America can’t say no.” The term “picaresque” is one of a literary nature, meaning the story “of a roguish hero of low social degree living by his or her wits in a corrupt society.” The Decemberists were meant for the stage, and that corrupt society may fit onstage, or inside a small sphere, but their story is grander than that. (The Decemberists play Emo’s Saturday, April 2.)

***.5

This article appears in “The AC” Gen Y Magazine Debuts.

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