Vinyl Wednesday: The King is Dead

by | Jun 20, 2019 | #VinylWednesday

Vinyl Wednesday: The King is Dead

The Decemberists

So here is a thing I’m going to try! It’s #VinylWednesday and I am going to talk about a record. Those of you who know me know that I am kind of a vinyl junkie. I started collecting and listening to records in 2015, when my husband and I were gifted an old turntable by a family friend. Four years and many garage sales, Amazon purchases, and concert merch tables later our collection has grown to some 200-odd albums and counting.
I can’t talk about my love of vinyl without talking about another love of mine – The Decemberists. Where to even start with this band? Hailing from Portland, Oregon, they’re a five-member indie group (often joined by guest vocalists and instrumentalists like Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond), and their sound is… eclectic. I got into them during my undergrad when a friend shared her MP3s of Castaways and Cutouts and the Tain with me, and almost ten years later they remain my favourite band. I have often struggled to describe the Decemberists to people who have never listened to them before. Do you like modern Victorian sea-shanties? Maudlin songs about doomed lovers leaping to their deaths? Does your heart pitter-patter when you hear the accordion, the harmonica or the hurdy-gurdy (sometimes even in the same song)? No? Okay, let me start over.
If you have a thing for narrative lyrics that use words like ‘gabardine’, ‘palaver’, ‘bonhomie’ and ‘eidolon’, and a sound that tends a little towards bluegrass and a lot towards British folk, you will probably like the Decemberists. Frontman and lyricist Colin Meloy has a very particular way with language – he’s actually written a few books, including the Wildwood series. Another really notable thing about the Decemberists is that all of their album art is done by illustrator Carson Ellis, who is married to Meloy (and has a great Instagram that you should check out).
If you’re at all into design, the Decemberists are definitely a rewarding band to get into; Ellis designs all of their artwork and merch, and her style is lush and distinctive. Think deceptively simple line work and a lot of solid, colour-blocked watercolours. She’s a pro at hand-lettering, and over the years she has created a really distinct look for the band that, at least for me, is as essential as the music itself. It’s worth picking up Decemberists albums on vinyl just to see her work in a large format, and there are almost always extra goodies in the liner notes (or sometimes on the actual record if the album is a double).
Which brings me, finally, to the album itself. The King is Dead was released in 2011, and is the band’s sixth studio album. The whole thing was recorded over a six-week period at Pendarvis Farm in Oregon, and it has a rustic, Americana-type feel that was kind of a departure for the band at the time – less accordion and more twangy steel guitars and harmonica. This is the record that I usually play for people who have never listened to the Decemberists before because it is (in my opinion) a little bit more accessible than some of their earlier stuff (looking at you, Castaways and Cutouts; great album but people kind of need to be eased into songs about the ghosts of dead infants).
Major highlights for me are the sweet, poetic June Hymn and the foot-stomping Down By the Water and Rox in the Box. And I’m definitely biased, but the opening track, Don’t Carry It All, is as poignant a musing on the cycles of life, death and rebirth as you’re ever going to find in a pop song. I walked down the aisle to it on my wedding day.
Rolling Stone has described the King is Dead as “rustic” and “pastoral”, and they are definitely on the nose with that description – it kind of makes me think of something Henry David Thoreau or William Wordsworth would have come up with if they were rock stars and not 19th century poets. It’s also an album that makes you want to take off your shoes, have a swig of moonshine, and stomp around the barn all night; I credit it for helping me realize that I don’t actually hate country music.
Thus concludes my inaugural #VinylWednesday post. Come back next week to listen to me wax (pun intended) poetic about another album from my collection. In the meantime, if you’d like to listen to The King is Dead you can find it on Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Or, I mean, buy it on vinyl.


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