The Decemberists
Picaresque

THE REVIEW

There are albums that on first listen slip away without leaving anything behind, and end up on the shelf gathering dust. Then some time passes, and without knowing why, the album in question finds its way back into the CD player, and everything changes. Maybe you have changed, maybe the air around you has changed, but certainly the music contained in the disc hasn't changed. This time, however, the notes stick to you, they enter your soul, and you realize you can no longer do without them.
This is exactly what happened with Picaresque, the latest work by "The Decemberists".

11 songs, 11 little stories, each with its unique atmosphere.
From the Spanish-tinged echoes of "Infanta", ode to a young princess from a distant land, to the R.E.M. influences of "We both go down together", a love story with very strong lyrics ("I found you, a tattooed tramp/A dirty daughter from the labour cans/I laid you down on the grass of a clearing/You wept but your soul was willing"). "Eli, The Barrow Boy" then enters the scene and we are in full "David Copperfield" mood (not the magician, you beasts!) which brings to mind a character like "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy" by Tim Burton, with the wheelbarrow as an extension of his arms, from which he cannot separate. There’s the spy story "The Bagman's Gambit", yet another impossible love, a ballad of voice and guitar that grows to an explosive and chaotic finale with strings. There’s the "Engine Driver" that speaks to us of the cathartic power of writing ("I am a writer, writer of fictions/I am the heart that you call home/And I've written pages upon pages/Trying to rid you from my bones"). Then the unexpected track, "Sixteen Military Wives", a genuine protest song that the current "new-whatever" bands cannot even imagine writing. Special mention for "The Mariner's Revenge Song", a true masterpiece of the album, the most theatrical piece of the lot that throws us, nothing less than, into the belly of a whale!
Unforgettable album.