There's a crash and a scream, and the groaning sound of a warship come to rape the harbor: That's right, The Decemberists have another song about pirates. "Tell your daughters do not walk the streets alone tonight!" cries Colin Meloy with nasal urgency, and the band gives it more drama than ever before, lunging into an aesthetic that's half Dickens, half 1950s adventure comic book. You can almost smell the mothballs on their costumes. They don't care that some listeners won't even make it past this song, or that some people don't want to hear a pirate story no matter how well it's told.
The Decemberists may never escape the label "quirky," which is a crime: Whatever the style, Colin Meloy's songwriting makes this band one of the strongest working today. His melodies are so perfect and his words so substantial that it reminds you how much slack you cut most other bands. Too many singers mumble or screech as if they didn't trust or care about their words: Meloy declares his lyrics, lets his work live or die by them, and sets them deep in masterful pop surroundings.
The band's confidence actually makes Her Majesty The Decemberists less accessible than their other releases. Their earliest material, on the 5 Songs EP, didn't stray far from acoustic alt-country, but their first full-length, Castaways and Cutouts-- which many people discovered only a few months ago, thanks to its reissue on Kill Rock Stars-- was a revelation, sometimes brilliant and sometimes a beautiful accident. Its dreamy tone erred on the side of melancholy; by contrast, Her Majesty veers toward the theatrical as Meloy steps up the role-playing and tells more intricate stories.
On "Shanty for the Arethusa" and "The Chimbley Sweep", the band marches aggressively past the just-skilled-enough playing of their other albums, sounding like a version of The Coral that's twice as smart (and half as loud). The horns, strings and keys they've brought in this time sweeten the production, and they nail the upbeat Britpop arrangement on "Billy Liar", a song about a dull summer break that has what sounds like a lovestruck chorus. There's also romance in "A Soldiering Life", a homoerotic ode to the military. It's winningly clever, and even if it's not the deepest song in their repertoire, you have to credit Meloy's enthusiasm when he practically drools the word "stevedore." It's just one display of the surgical precision of Meloy's lyrics, along with the taut ballad "Red Right Ankle", or the rich imagery of "Bachelor and the Bride".
But what's most intriguing about Meloy's style isn't his erudition or kitsch; it's the strange tension he creates by mashing both qualities together. "Los Angeles I'm Yours" sounds odd not just because he matches the disgusted lyrics with a breezy tune, but because he throws old-fashioned, florid language-- references to "orphans and oligarchs" and taunts like "I can see your undies"-- against post-modern Los Angeles. And in "Red Right Ankle", he alternates between a metaphorical and anatomical use of the word "heart." Describing a girl's suitors, he sings, "Some had crawled their way into your heart/ To rend your ventricles apart." We know Meloy can slop through pirate gore in one song and write poetry in the next, but it's more interesting to hear how easily he can do both-- and how willfully he'll do either.
As they've become bolder, The Decemberists have lost some of the uncertain dreaminess of the best songs on Castaways-- say, "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect" or "Grace Cathedral Hill". But Castaways' near-transcendent finale, "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade", is matched here by "I Was Meant for the Stage", where Meloy doesn't just state his ambitions, but stands at the front of the crowd and waits for the tomatoes to fly. Maybe from here they'll become an esoteric cult band, or maybe they'll just keep getting better: Either way, The Decemberists have already established themselves so thoroughly that I was able to make it through an entire review without comparing them to Neutral Milk Hotel or namechecking Edward Gorey. They're an unclassifiable American original, and they could turn out to be one of our best.
