The Decemberists: new album March 24 (free MP3 inside)

[mopper_smurf]

Just upped The Rake's Song by The Decemberists on my blog here:

http://blogger.xs4all.nl/werksman/archive/2009/01/15/438865.aspx

New album coming soon. Here's the blurb from my inbox:

THE DECEMBERISTS' THE HAZARDS OF LOVE
SCHEDULED FOR MARCH 24th RELEASE

17-Song Suite Features Guest Vocalists Becky Stark And Shara Worden


Fans Get A Preview With Free Download Of "The Rake's Song,"

Available Beginning Today At Band's Website

On March 24th, Capitol Records will release The Decemberists' The Hazards Of Love, the follow-up to the group's 2006 breakthrough, The Crane Wife, which NPR listeners voted their favorite album of the year. With their fifth full-length album, the Portland-based quintet of Colin Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query and John Moen solidifies its standing as one of the most innovative creative forces in music today. In an age when singles rule and the death of the album has been pronounced by many, The Decemberists – who will be featured in a live session on NPR's "World Café" today – have fashioned an anomaly: a record that demands to be listened to from start to finish and reveals more with each subsequent play. The 17-song suite, recorded with the band's longtime producer, Tucker Martine, is rooted in ancient language and imagery, yet entirely modern and accessible.

Eager to share a bit of the new music with fans before street date, The Decemberists are making "The Rake's Song" available as a free download beginning today at www.decemberists.com.

The album began when Meloy – long fascinated by the British folk revival of the 1960s – found a copy of revered vocalist Anne Briggs's 1966 EP, titled The Hazards of Love. Since there was actually no song with the album's title, he set out to write one. Soon he was immersed in something much larger than just a new composition.

The Hazards Of Love tells the tale of a woman named Margaret who is ravaged by a shape-shifting animal; her lover, William; a forest queen; and a cold-blooded, lascivious rake, who recounts with spine-tingling ease how he came "to be living so easy and free" in the aforementioned "The Rake's Song." Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden deliver the lead vocals for the female characters, while My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Robyn Hitchcock and the Spinanes' Rebecca Gates appear in supporting roles. The range of sounds reflects the characters' arcs, from the accordion's singsong lilt in "Isn't it a Lovely Night?" to the heavy metal thunder of "The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing."

"There's an odd bond between the music of the British folk revival and classic metal," says Meloy. "A natural connection between, like, Fairport Convention and Black Sabbath – of course, Sandy Denny from Fairport even sang with Led Zeppelin on 'The Battle of Evermore.' I think there's a shared sense of narrative and ambience, of moving beyond the first person in your writing. And I thought it would be interesting to mess around with that."

The Decemberists will tour this spring, playing The Hazards Of Love straight through for the show's first half and older material for the remainder. Ambitious, yes – but this is a band that doesn't shy away from major stage productions, having performed The Crane Wife with full orchestral accompaniment on several 2007 dates, including a stop at the historic Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Upcoming tour dates will be announced shortly.

The track listing for The Hazards Of Love is as follows:


1. Prelude
2. The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle the Thistles Undone)
3. A Bower Scene
4. Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)
5. The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)
6. The Queen's Approach
7. Isn't it a Lovely Night?
8. The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid
9. An Interlude       
10. The Rake's Song
11. The Abduction of Margaret
12. The Queen's Rebuke / The Crossing
13. Annan Water
14. Margaret in Captivity
15. The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)
16. The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)
17. The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)

[rowjimmy]

Sweet.
BTW, Colin Meloy will be on World Cafe this afternoon at 2pm (eastern).
http://xpn.org

[mattstick]

I'm waivering between excitement and hoping it doesn't completely suck.

[jedifunk]

wow matt... have you been disappointed with any of their other albums?  i haven't, so therefore, i'm extremely excited.

crane wife is one of my favorite albums ever, so i can't wait for this.  it will be very hard to live up to the crane wife, but the singles they've been releasing have been very good (valerie plame was excellent).

thanks for the heads up.. k+

[rowjimmy]

Btw, mopper, I gave you a shout out on my blog.

Thanks again

[alcoholandcoffeebeans]

K+ RJ and mopper for keeping us informed!

i'm excited for this as well

[mopper_smurf]

Btw, mopper, I gave you a shout out on my blog.

Thanks again

Thanks. Looking forward to hearing some of your "local" tapings. Thanks for taping Kelller W. Listening right now.

[mistercharlie]

My girl lived in portland for a couple of years with her best friend, and her best friend used to date one of the members of the Decemberists. I had never heard of them until one night when they were going to be on Conan or Letterman, she told me about her friend and said we had to watch it, I was glad I agreed.
Anyway, thanks for the info, and the sample.
+K

[mopper_smurf]

Colin Meloy is on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/colinmeloy

[rowjimmy]

He may be but I am not.


/keeps it that way

[shoreline99]

Many of the songs on this album have been captured in various forms from their fall tour and several Colin solo dates and are floating around teh interweb. I'm cautiously optimistic.

http://orate.decemberists.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12374 for Hazards of Love 1 and the Rake, acoustic

Colin Meloy's interview from the World Cafe is online at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99406502

[mattstick]

[nab]

My girl lived in portland for a couple of years with her best friend, and her best friend used to date one of the members of the Decemberists. I had never heard of them until one night when they were going to be on Conan or Letterman, she told me about her friend and said we had to watch it, I was glad I agreed.
Anyway, thanks for the info, and the sample.
+K

Oh yeah, well I used to read poetry with Colin Meloy when he was just a well read kid in a college band, beat that. :wink:

[shoreline99]

Just heard the Rake's song on the radio. WFUV in NYC.

[alcoholandcoffeebeans]

just FYI... it's up for pre-order.. cd & vinyl stylie....


and a new tour date added in MD.. with Andrew Bird...

Point of Order:
• Preorder NOW UNDERWAY for CD and 180-gram double vinyl of "The Hazards of Love"
• First 750 CDs and 250 LPs ordered will be autographed by the band.
• Win a Baglama Saz signed by the band -- and two seats to any show on the "A Short Fazed Hovel" Tour 2009!
• Bundles, bundles, bundles!
• SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT: Decemberists and Andrew Bird at The Merriweather Post Pavilion June 8, with presale happening NOW.

Adored Mailing List Recipients,

It's getting to be that time: the bulbs are hatching, the robins are skulking the back yard. Spring, while not necessarily being in the air itself, is loitering in the distance, stooping to tie its shoes in an annoyingly transparent attempt at stalling the inevitable. Our new record is set to be scattered across the globe by 3,000 coordinated robot pigeons on March 24th; have your butterfly nets at the ready.

In the meantime, we have an offer for you, our loyal inner circle of the Mailing List Recipiency (that is a word, by the way, though my spell check is apparently too plebe to let if fly): you can AT THIS VERY MOMENT put your dibs on a copy of The Hazards of Love and it will be delivered to you in a timely fashion on the date of its release. You may choose either Compact Disc or Double 180 Gram Gatefold Vinyl. But move fast: if you are one of the first 750 CD orderers or 250 vinyl orderers, your copy will arrive at your doorstep tidily signed by each member of the band. Jenny may even grace your copy with her much-imitated "smiley-face" rendering.

But get this: one lucky CD or vinyl orderer will win (by dint of a random drawing, I suppose) a Baglama Saz signed by the band. This strange Turkish 3-string banjo-like instrument will not only create an aura of "indie-worldliness" about you to impress your friends, but it, too, will come festooned with signatures from the Decemberists. And if you're the cynical sort for whom such a gift is not enough, we'd like to give you and a friend free access to the Decemberists concert of your choice from the upcoming "A Short Fazed Hovel" Tour 2009.

Go to www.decemberistsshop.com to preorder your copy of The Hazards of Love and enter the contest. But be warned: you'll likely be faced with many iterations of what is known in the vernacular of the industry as "bundles." In common tongue, this means you can choose to order your CD or vinyl album with a t-shirt for a pretty decent price. We have two new shirt designs: 1) a gorgeous portrait of the Rake from The Hazards of Love and 2) The Ilamat. Both were drawn in the inimitable hand of Carson Ellis, The Decemberists' personal Illustratrix/Art Slave.

And for those of you who live in the Baltimore/Columbia area, or live in farther-flung places but are not opposed to a little travel here and there, we Decemberists are pleased to announce another addition to Phase One of the "A Short Fazed Hovel" Tour 2009: Monday, June 8th at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD with very special guest Andrew Bird. Tickets go on sale to the general public next Friday, March 6, but a presale is currently underway at http://decemberists.tickets.musictoday.com/. All other dates for Phase One are currently onsale - here they are again below:

May 19 - Hollywood Palladium - Los Angeles, CA
May 20 - Fox Theatre - Oakland, CA
May 21 - McDonald Theater - Eugene, OR
May 23 - Sasquatch Festival - George, WA
May 24 - Wilma Theatre - Missoula, MT
May 26 - Fillmore Auditorium - Denver, CO
May 27 - Uptown Theater - Kansas City, MO
May 29 - Riverside Theater - Milwaukee, WI
May 31 - The Pageant - St. Louis, MO
June 1 - Lifestyle Communities Pavilion - Columbus, OH
June 3 - Tabernacle - Atlanta, GA
June 4 - Memorial Auditorium - Raleigh, NC
June 5 - The National - Richmond, VA
June 6 - Tower Theatre - Upper Darby, PA
June 8 - Merriweather Post Pavilion - Columbia, MD
June 9 - Bank of America Pavillion - Boston, MA
June 10 - Radio City Music Hall - New York, NY
June 11-14 - Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival - Manchester, TN