John Lucas

I have a very extensive catalogue of old articles that I think are worth revisiting. Here’s one of them. (This article originally appeared in The Georgia Straight.)

Whimsy And Horror: The Decemberists Explore Both In Equal Measure In Singer Colin Meloy’s Literate Songs

It’s a hell of a way to start a pop record. “Shanty for the Arethusa”, which kicks off Her Majesty the Decemberists, begins with the creaking and groaning of a mist-shrouded clipper in some forsaken Victorian outport, followed in short order by the sharp sound of a woman’s scream. “Tell your daughters do not walk the streets alone tonight,” Decemberists singer Colin Meloy warns in the first verse of the song, a weird lament about spectral sailors, ghost ships, and very real threats of bodily harm.

Reached at home in Portland, Oregon, Meloy says he knew right away that “Shanty for the Arethusa” would be the first track on Her Majesty, winning out over breezier pop confections such as the sweetly sardonic “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” and the giddily melancholic “Song for Myla Goldberg”. Meloy’s friends and colleagues, needless to say, thought him a lunatic. “They went, ‘No. No, no, no. Don’t. That’s the song everybody’s going to hear first, and it’s really off-putting. It’s scary and disturbing and weird. Put a pop song first,’ ” the singer recalls.

Meloy got his way. Placing the disc’s most morbid song before all the others, he says, was a way of weeding out those listeners who might not be ready for the Decemberists’ brand of whip-smart, bookish songcraft. “I think there is something in me that really wants to get it out at the very beginning. It’s like, ‘If you don’t like this, then you should stop listening now,’ ” he says.

Meloy’s refusal to pander to his audience might alienate a few potential listeners, but it has won his band a healthy cult following. The Decemberists are a particular favourite of music critics, who have championed the group both for its winning sound—a curious blend of Kurt Weill cabaret and ’60s folk-rock, all spinning organ and swelling accordion—and Meloy’s hyperliterate story-songs of soldiers, mariners, Gypsies, and other transient souls. (The singer-lyricist holds a degree in creative writing from the University of Montana, and is currently working on a book about the Replacements’ classic Let It Be LP for Continuum International.)

Her Majesty is the follow-up to Castaways and Cutouts, released in 2002 by the tiny company Hush but reissued more widely last year by the Decemberists’ current home, Kill Rock Stars. If the group seems a little out of place on the label that introduced the world to Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Sleater-Kinney, well, it’s hard to figure out just where the five-piece does fit in. Certainly not on commercial radio, which wouldn’t have the slightest clue what to do with the band’s curious balance of whimsy and horror. And Meloy notes that the Decemberists are an uneasy fit on most college-station play lists as well. “Frankly, I don’t know how well we sit between Death Cab for Cutie and the Shins,” he says. “Their stuff is so much less geeky; so much cooler. I’ve never thought of us as being a very cool band.”

Well, those who appreciate Belle and Sebastian probably get it. And so, hopefully, will fans of the Walkmen, with whom the Decemberists play Richard’s on Richards on Wednesday (February 11). If the geeks, freaks, and bookworms who have already discovered Meloy and company have anything to say about it, the place should be packed to capacity.

“We’ve been enjoying a lot of word of mouth,” Meloy avers. “It’s been really nice. I think that there’s a lot of people recommending our album and passing it on to people. It’s a very grassroots sort of way of getting the word out. That’s really worked for us, for whatever reason. I think that people who do like it really like it. The people who appreciate the aesthetic, and appreciate the sense of humour and the approach that we take to music, typically are the sort of people that really grab onto something and hold onto it. And also try to shove it down their friends’ throats.”