Decemberists "Down By The Water"

You can practically hear the relieved sighing of record promotions folks on this new Decemberists track.

After a huge breakthrough with "The Crane Wife," I'm sure the people who had spent years working to spread the word of this excellent band were hoping for the continued ascent of this rising band's profile when they released a follow up.

Instead they got "The Hazards Of Love."

I wrote a little about my feelings on the album, last year.

No doubt, "Hazards" is the work of a brilliant mind. And the shear balls it took to even contemplate an endeavor such as a rock opera about a woman who falls in love with a shape-shifting forest dweller, his jealous mother and an infanticide-prone lover, must be commended, by any lover of challenging art.

But for those who might be a lover (or needer) of commerce, the word "Rock Opera" is still, pretty much, poison.

So how nice, for my friends in the record community, who have delivered "Down By The Water" to radio, giddily letting us know that this new Decemberists album is just a collection of rock songs, and there is no playbill or libretto necessary.

The Decemberists “The Rake’s Song”

Cheers to The Decemberists for taking on the challenge of making an album that is more like a novel. “The Hazards Of Love” is a collection of songs that form a narrative about lovers and their obstacles. A tad pretentious? Yes. But definitely an “A” for effort.

But what to think of the band insisting that “The Rake’s Song” be the first single?

Obviously, Colin Meloy, leader of the Decemberists, is a smart guy. You’d have to be, to put something like this together.

So why would they choose, as the first single, the song where “The Rake” violently and graphically murders his own children? A smart guy would have to know that no radio station is going to play that.

The song works quite well in the context of the album, in the context of the story. But standing on it's own, or placed between other people’s songs on the radio, it sounds gruesome and twisted.

It’s would be like if the trailer for the movie Bambi consisted only of the scene where Bambi’s mother gets shot.

Where the Decemberists trying to screw with us radio folk? Challenge us? Mock us? Our are they oblivious to commercial concerns? Or resentful of them?

Whatever their motive, I thought that on it’s own, the song is so upsetting, that we shouldn’t even play it on What’s New For Lunch, one time.

But here it is, for your listening . . . uh, pleasure.

Hear The Decemberists “The Rake’s Song”