A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing The Decemberists in concert for the third time. They were playing their new album, The Hazards of Love, straight through, which was appropriate since the whole album is a continuous story, a rock-opera really, that tells the tale of a shape-shifting beast who kidnaps and impregnates a young girl at the behest of an evil queen who is intent on keeping said girl from her adopted son. In typical Decemberist’s fashion, the young lovers die together at the end as they recite their wedding vows to one another on a sinking ship. It’s really not as bizarre as it sounds…in fact, I titled this post Music of the Mundane precisely because I find that so much of their music celebrates the mundane aspects of life, apologizing for losing a friend’s bike, awkward romances and subsequent break-ups…and occasionally they throw in a song about a man who finds a crane who he nurses back to health and then marries, you know, the stuff of everyday life.
What I find fascinating about their music, is that even at their most fantastical and ridiculous (hands down The Mariner’s Revenge) they are really just telling stories. They’re poets with almost no concern for metaphor. It’s almost as if their music is there just to recount tales, with rarely and agenda or concern for greater meaning. But what I love is that I find their music incredibly meaningful in that it celebrates life in such a way as not to belittle any experience, profession or relationship. It celebrates the most ordinary, and extraordinary, aspects of life, and holds them side-by-side as equally significant, and really not that different.
What I find fascinating about their music, is that even at their most fantastical and ridiculous (hands down The Mariner’s Revenge) they are really just telling stories. They’re poets with almost no concern for metaphor. It’s almost as if their music is there just to recount tales, with rarely and agenda or concern for greater meaning. But what I love is that I find their music incredibly meaningful in that it celebrates life in such a way as not to belittle any experience, profession or relationship. It celebrates the most ordinary, and extraordinary, aspects of life, and holds them side-by-side as equally significant, and really not that different.
- Brian Janous
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