23 Mar 09
The Decemberists
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The Hazards Of Love
[March 24, 2009] | [Capitol Records]
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6.1/10
Well, you had to see it coming. From the various tragedies, epic quests, elaborate observations about the world (real or fantasy), it was just screaming for a majestic, epic, and ultimately tragic story spanned out through a whole album. And the heavier progressive rock moments perhaps we saw coming too through The Crane Wife’s adventurous 12 minute “The Island”. However though, what will surprise listeners (lest they have read Colin Meloy’s thoughts on being a metalhead) is this touch of metal The Hazards of Love gives here and there. It’s not much, and still feels as just playing into their progressive rock persona. Many times though, this persona falls short, and ultimately “The Island” tops any of Hazards’ attempts.
The music that backdrops Hazards conveys the emotions of the scene and as such gives rise to thunderous clams during the story’s darker moments, and acoustic picking during the lighter moments. While it is able to accomplish this just fine, it sacrifices musical ingenuity, intricacy, and layering to do so. As a result, it creates simplistic passenger rhythms to Hazards’ main concern: the story. The instruments remain isolated and separate on a regular basis, and if you’re familiar with The Decemberists’ past works – it feels rather shortsighted for such a musically strong band that has been leading the 2000s with some of the best baroque pop in the industry. It’s safe to say an unneeded sacrifice was taken to create progressive rock and metal melodies for the sake of the story.
What’s more disappointing is that even the lyrical story-telling of The Decemberists has seemingly waned when compared to past works. While it may be a charming little love tale - gone is any sense of symbolism or lyrical freedom. The ideas are rather concrete and do no more than tell the fantasy. What we take out of it is a tragedy that has a moving ending, but is rather forgettable.
That being said, Hazards is nonetheless engaging. The story is still an intriguing tale that takes some dissecting to fully figure it out. It’s rather playful in this sense as you can go as far to find out where Colin Meloy actually placed the story to take place, and his insistence to represent the area appropriately throughout the album. And while it lacks dynamic music, it does create a particularly pleasuring pattern of music that shines when the female vocalists, Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden, come in to electrify the scene. It’s within these moments that the music’s lower priority is preferred as though both have strong beautiful voices. Furthermore does Hazards’ succeed by playing into the characters giving strong electric guitar work to Worden’s evil-witch-of-the-forest strong voice and light acoustic strumming to backdrop the sweeter innocent voice of Stark.
Regardless, it’s only within glimpses that we see their musical ability shine. Take the end of “The Queen’s Rebuke”, where the organ and guitar feed into each other proficiently each with an allotted time to take the lead role before weaving through one another to switch places. Often however, it’s simply acoustic picking for the lighter moments or fast-paced electric guitar to give a hastened feeling to the song. While it is fun, it is also a repetitive and forgettable act. At the end, the distressed hero is singing out “But I pulled you and I called you here / (Didn’t I? Didn’t? Didn’t I?)” And we see Meloy ultimately saved the best for last as the lyrics are uniquely interpretive; the musical progression is simple and subtly intricate in an appealing manner that aptly plays into the sad ending. This is the album’s ending and after about 50 minutes of play, a slowed and simple approach is favorable. Through Hazards, we see The Decemberists trying to play a relatively unknown style, and though the melodies may be fun – they are ultimately simplistic because of lack of experience.
-Mark
