"I never was a metal head," remarked Colin Meloy in an Earlash interview last July. "It's something in my later years I've come to regret a little bit just because everybody has their stories of when they were a metal head. And it wasn't until recently that I started listening to Black Sabbath and started appreciating it."
Two albums and a six-song Five Songs EP into their career, The Decemberists' are beginning to seriously define their sound; a sudden plunge into, say, heavy metal, seems unlikely. Yet the first movement of The Tain EP, the band's new 18-minute composition based loosely on the 8th-century Celtic Ulster cycle's central poem "Tain Bo Cuailinge", finds Meloy and the others most immediately concerned with-- am I about to say this?-- serious Ur-metal riffage. Granted, Decemberist metal is not going to weigh down the Dominique Leones of the world, but make no mistake: Never has this band sung a flag so black, a maiden so iron.
The opening of The Tain is indeed jarring, though there's always more than meets the ear with this band, and the disc's dark acoustic guitar opening is not without foil: Pay attention to how Colin overdramatizes the dark line with his heavy plucks, disarming its sense of foreboding. When the rest of the band joins him in unison, what should be enough of a killer riff for friendly genocide is undermined by the organ's funny whir and Rachel Blumberg's gentle cymbal taps. In short, the sound is off-kilter, though not without ample deception, and only hints at the level of sophistication to come in the remaining movements.
The Decemberists have consistently proven that they understand the tensions that can be exploited in song: Morbid verses are set to straightforward, "fun" pop instrumentals ("July July"; "Chimbley Sweep"), narration is often not Colin's own, but another's ("Leslie Anne Levine"), inconsequential banalities are granted cosmic musical significance ("Song for Myla Goldberg"), sincerity is performatively lampooned ("I Was Meant for the Stage"). The Tain is no different: In fact, it's easily The Decemberists' most carefully considered and sophisticated effort yet-- to a limited degree, some of Colin's subtle musical humor even depends on cursory knowledge of its bizarre Celtic cycle namesake. In short: the cycle's most celebrated tale is how Queen Medb's army attacks the town of Ulster with the intention of carrying off their great sacred bull, and only CuChulainn, the story's hero, is able to resist the invasion and defend the town. To call a queen, as Colin does, a "salty little pisser," is a brilliant conceit, matched only by his decision to set her raid for a bull (her "shiny prize") to bombastic hard rock hooks.
When the song reaches its third movement, Colin switches the focus of his narrative to how CuChulainn, originally named Setanta, became "CuChulainn", or literally, "Hound of Cullan." As a mournful bassline sways, accompanied by occasional strums of heavily distorted guitar, Colin assumes different points of view with each passing line, and the band swells to an ironic degree of celebration upon the words, "Here come loose the hound/ To blow me down," the moment at which Setanta is attacked by King Cullan's guard dog.
This is not to say that one cannot at all appreciate The Tain without knowledge of Celtic mythology-- though, for me, personally, the interaction between the instrumentation and Colin's lyrics has always been The Decemberists' most fascinating trait. Take The Tain's ghostly fourth movement, by far the entire composition's most poignant melody. Rachel assumes vocals akin to her orphanry on "Chimbley Sweep", this time accompanied by light piano and bowed cello. The accordion finally makes its somewhat tongue-in-cheek appearance at the bridge, fighting with found sounds and music box bells. Meloy reassumes vocals for the fifth movement, which restates The Tain's original theme-- though not before he beautifully overextends himself in lines like, "Darling dear, what have you done?/ Your hands and face are smeared with blood," subjects that last word to a strange guttural contortion.
With each release, The Decemberists grow more sophisticated in their songcraft and subtler in their wit. The result, naturally, is that their releases are increasingly more demanding on the listener. Meeting a record on its own terms, though, is to a large extent a forgotten responsibility. Especially given its disorienting opener, The Tain EP is dense musically and lyrically, a bona fide grower, but certainly worth the effort to unravel it.
