Capsue Music Review - The Decemberists

Decemberists - The Crane Wife

Another of the year's disappointments, not that it's awful, it's just that the group's great strength is Colin Meloy's songwriting skills and these are not exploited to full advantage on this record. Great songwriting is not just about precious melodies, it's also about song structure, more specifically in the rock context about tension and release, slow build, and a big payoff as the last strains fade away.

Unfortunately, the prog-rock genre does not lend itself to song structure; separate sections sound like snippets of different songs smooshed together. Furthermore, there are few (none, actually) pop or rock musicians with the compositional skills to make a truly unified work of multiple sections as could be achieved by a decent classical composer.

Of the two lengthy compositions, "The Crane Wife 1 & 2" stands up fairly well, while I find "The Island" to be dull. Whatever merits true prog-rock has cannot be achieved here because the band just doesn't have the chops. The shorter songs nevertheless offer some of what made previous Decemberists albums so terrific, particularly "Shankhill Butchers" and "Sons & Daughters," the latter of which once again demonstrates the endless lyrical merits of the word "cinnamon."