The newest from The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love

I've been enthralled by a recent release from Portland's incredible band, The Decemberists; an epic and fascinating conceptual CD entitled The Hazards of Love. As a group I've liked most of what I've heard from them, but this creation kicks it up a notch. It tells a vivid and dark tale of love, betrayal, murder and revenge, hanging it on a framework of diverse musical styles. In structure it appears to harken back to The Who's Quadraphenia, Jethro Tull's Aqualung, or Pink Floyd's The Wall (dare I say, rock opera?), but it really carries that structure into the 21st Century. It is a virtuoso exercise in story weaving and aural composition, and really demands repeated listens.

I was introduced to this masterwork on the NPR show All Songs Considered in a live concert at the South By Southwest Music Festival. The group played the entire song cycle in it's entirety, a close to hour long proposition. I was so taken by it that I bought it and downloaded it a couple of days later, and the studio version, while different in feeling, is every bit as amazing and luminous as the live set. Before the words progressive rock were overworked into a term of derision, this is the kind of effort it described. And it is the kind of creation that moves the rock genre forward to new territories.

This is a work that ranges from quiet acoustic musings to electric sturm und drang, and it grabbed me by the throat and hauled me along for the ride from the first chord. It gives me a flash of the kind of delight I felt when I first heard Abbey Road and Led Zeppelin II, and there are echoes of XTC and Fairport Convention, yet it is a work of consummate originality and imagination. Colin Meloy, the Decemberists front man and the composer of this sonic novella, exercises a mastery of his story telling that reveals more and more on each listen.

This creation has awakened something in me that has only had flickering awareness lately: the joy of discovering a CD of lasting import. Run, do not walk, to get this release!!!