The Decemberists – As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again

Indie Folk | Americana | Baroque Pop

94%

 

I’ve loved scores of albums over the years, and universe willing I hope to love many more, but of those only a handful have I loved to the point of obsession. Listening on repeat for weeks or months on end, and in the few waking hours when I’m not actively listening, odds are I’m still thinking about it. Albums like that come around once every few years if I’m lucky. Curiously, looking back at all the records that I’ve placed on such a pedestal, they have all served to scratch a very particular itch. There’s just something about an album with depth, one that presents itself as a mystery to be unravelled. Whether it offers a single overarching story, or each song is acting as a world unto itself, I want something that invites me to decode the lyrics and delve into its allegories and inspirations. The kind of project that feels like it should come with a reading list in the liner notes, or packaged with a ball of red string for connecting clues on a corkboard.  

An important distinction to make however, is that non of this should ever feel like required reading. We don’t nerd out on lore about our favourite fantasy settings because we secretly long for homework, we do it because we’re first and foremost drawn in by the stories told within. Working to understand those worlds better is just another way to spend more time in them. The same is true of music. You’re not drawn to songs for their backstory and subtext, but because they’re already great songs long before you’ve even begun to think about diving deeper. All those extra layers beneath are just a bonus. 

At their best The Decemberists were practically the poster child for such records. Whether weaving character driven tales on Picaresque, drawing from history and myth on The Crane Wife, or crafting their own grand Shakespearian fairy story for The Hazards Of Love, they frequently set their ambitions that bit higher than their peers. Yet even if half the meaning behind the music went over your head, it was still captivating. The verbose lyricism still hums with the gravitas of classic poetry, the whimsy and excess akin to vaudeville theatre, memorable characters and wild imaginative stories right out of a Studio Ghibli film. When the band are firing on all cylinders, they are quite the unique adventure.

With As It Ever Was The Decemberists have quite unexpectedly rekindled those halcyon days, with their best album in 15 years. I can’t recall when a first listen of an album last felt so memorable. Each track bringing a different sound, a different energy, a different approach to storytelling. Every time thinking “ooh this might be my favourite song so far… no wait, this one… actually this one“. The buoyant 60s jangle pop of ‘Burial Ground’ giving way to the raucous brass and infectious Latin rhythms of ‘Oh No!’. The trilling woodwinds on ‘The Reapers’ lending the pastoral lyricism and the scenes they conjure an almost hymnal quality, while the gorgeous melodies and unshakeable earworms of ‘Long White Veil’ are a paragon of Americana excellence. This ghost story attempts to hide behind a love story, but the sun-kissed steel guitar carries it no matter what page you’re on. 

Between its traditional folk arrangement and multitude of references to Tudor England, ‘William Fitzwilliam’ could pass for a song that’s been sung for centuries, were it not for the fact that it also mentions sneakers and skateboards. The delicious darkness of ‘Don’t Go To The Woods’ manages to wrap a gothic foreboding around the idea of falling into the wrong crowd, while ‘The Black Maria’ likens the spectre of death to the police snatching people up from the streets. The latter’s simple folk harmonies and soft tender brass feels perfect for a stripped back end of show singalong akin to The National’s ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’.  

The entire first half of the album maintains a stunningly high standard, managing to feel effortlessly diverse and full of surprises at every turn. Like a victory lap for a band shaking off the dust to bring the fruits of all their years of experimentation and growth to the table. Sadly As It Ever Was does lose some of its shine in the second half. Tracks like ‘Born to the Morning’, ‘Tell Me What’s On Your Mind’ and ‘Never Satisfied’, while charming in their own way, don’t bring anything new to the table the way the preceding songs did. With the album’s runtime stretching well over an hour, a more concise and consistent version of this album might have left them on the cutting room floor and been marginally better for it. 

However, the album has one final ace up its sleeve: the sprawling nineteen minute prog rock epic ‘Joan in the Garden’. The way it shifts seamlessly between four distinct movements which all explore completely different sounds, and yet still feel right at home, is the perfect microcosm of the album as a whole. The soft hallowed folk that opens the whole affair gradually builds towards what feels like a fervoured plea to the heavens for salvation, with a towering riff like the ringing of church bells that interpolates Pink Floyd’s ‘Have A Cigar’, before all that desperation just crumbles away into ambient noise. The five minute ambient section at times seems so sparse and abstract that it can feel more like a buffer of silence that hides a bonus track moreso than part of a greater whole.

However you slice it, the grand finale is more than worth the wait. This heavy rocker just explodes unexpectedly onto the scene, with the relentless gallop of something from an Iron Maiden record. Packed with some of the hardest fucking lines I’ve heard all year. “Over stone and grapevine, Over the souls on the breadline, There’s a reckoning at hand, Our hand” and “Bring on duke or dauphin, Blood will flow like a fountain, As it ever was so it will be again” to name but the two that bookend the whole phenomenal affair. Half of me wants to race around the room, high on the sheer adrenaline rush, while the other half wants to sit down and watch a documentary about Joan of Arc with rapt attention. 

I’m keen to read deeper between the lines of the weddings described in ‘Oh No!’ and ‘Long White Veil’, keen to sieve through all the archaic terms found throughout the verbose lyricism for words to add to my vocabulary, keen to search for interviews with Colin Meloy that pick his brain over the album’s inspirations. Most of all though I’m desperate to dive straight back into the album. Again and again. The Decemberists have been stuck in the doldrums for a good few years now, sanding down their most extravagant edges in an effort to be more streamlined. Moving away from complex character studies for more conventional song structures, eschewing bouzoukis and accordions for synths. As It Ever Was sees the band commit wholeheartedly to type, embracing their own ambition, eclecticism and eccentricity. They sound all the better for it, delivering a record to rival the very best from their heyday. As it once was, so it is again.