- Indie folk rockers The Decemberists are back with their eighth full-length album, I’ll Be Your Girl. The venerable collective has enjoyed a stellar career that has spanned seventeen years, producing several critically acclaimed albums. Stalwarts of cohesive, concept-type albums such as their 2009 rock-opera, The Hazards of Love and their 2011, commercially successful folk album, The King is Dead, The Decemberists have created another homogenous album. Rife with electro sounding synthesisers and drum beats, these songs might be dressed in a different wardrobe, but the adroit, baroque songs of singer-songwriter, Colin Meloy are still as salient as ever.
Endeavouring to venture into unfamiliar territory, the band sought out producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Lana Del Ray) to record the album. The new collaboration is evident on opening track, Once in My Life, as detailed by Meloy who says that the track transmuted from its live rendition after entering the studio. Initially performed as a folk-anthem, Meloy claims that the inclusion of the synthesiser was the linchpin of the arrangement. It’s hard to disagree, with the opener building from a lone acoustic guitar into a high-strata anthem. Similar crescendos are found throughout the album, like on tracks, Everything is Awful and We All Die Young. The former, a bright song with gloomy lyrics and the latter being a fatalistic sing-along, replete with a choir of children.
If the classical Decemberist elements are buried in the timbre of the album, then it’s a shallow grave. Meloy’s jaunty acoustic guitar and archaic wordplay still sit at the core of many of these songs, particularly on Cutting Stone and the eight-minute epic, Rusalka, Rusalka / Wild Rushes. Other tracks are more unusual, such as Your Ghost, which sounds like background music of some Nintendo 64 game, and the Beatlesque, Sucker’s Prayer. A veteran band, The Decemberists always manage to produce albums with interesting music and thought-provoking lyrics and I’ll Be Your Girl is no exception. Although they might believe in their own dictum, we all die young, this album only suggests that The Decemberists are a band that will be remembered for a long, long time.
- Jonathan Cloumassis.