What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
“We know, we know, we belong to ya/ We know you built your life around us/ Would we change, we had to change some”
So begins “The Singer Addresses His Audience,” the opening track to What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, the latest album from Portland-based indie folk band The Decemberists. It’s a lovely nod to the band’s fanbase, acknowledging that, yes, the band’s sound has morphed from overly theatrical prog-rock about classic literature and old myths to well-crafted folk-rock songs of a more personal nature — but the band is still this for its fans.
The album, along with 2011’s surprisingly mainstream success The King is Dead, could lead to cries of selling out, but The Decemberists’ songwriting talents haven’t diminished. Songs like the lead single “Make You Better” and “Philomena” showcase the new Decemberists at its best — writing catchy, poignant songs that showcase the band’s growing focus on making good, “simple” music (though you could never really accuse The Decemberists of making normal, simple music).
Lead singer Colin Meloy continues the band’s trend of focusing on the personal with the wistful “Philomena,” an ode to childhood and aging in which he sings, “All I ever wanted in the world, was just to live to see a naked girl/ But I found that quickly bored, I wanted more.” The aforementioned “Make You Better” should be the album’s surefire hit, managing to be a beautiful pop song with an aching look on a love faded from passion into something stronger, but still tinged with sadness — “But we’re not so starry-eyed anymore/ Like the perfect paramour you were in your letters.”
Fans of the band’s usual lyrical content of star-crossed lovers, sailors, crane wives and ghost boys will find the lyrical content here a little disappointing. Overall the lyrics stay simple; you won’t really be reaching for your dictionary as past Decemberists records might have forced you to do.
There are some references to the older Decemberists. “Cavalry Captain” may be a strict love song, but its references to captains and ships, coupled with a powerful brass section, makes it reminiscent of work from Picaresque and The Crane Wife. “Carolina Low” is a sparse, southern-influenced folk song, and the heartbreaking “12/17/12” turns its focus to the painfully recent, real-life tragedy of the Newtown shootings. The album even includes a dark little ode to Irish shanties with “Better Not Wake the Baby,” featuring grimly hilarious lines like “Make your moan of your lot in life/ Split your mind half-crazy/ Gouge your eyes with a butter knife/ But it better not wake the baby.”
Still, despite the band’s meta-anthem/apology for its changed sound, it’s hard to not miss the more unique aspects of the old Decemberists, the band that wrote a 13-minute epic inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest or wrote an entire song about the presentational parade of an infant Spanish princess. Also, for all the restraint and evident editing of the individual tracks, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World still manages to feel a little bloated and uneven. Not every track is great, and certain elements like the call-and-response choruses of “Anti-Summersong” and “Easy Come, Easy Go” are pretty cringe-worthy.
What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is another great album from one of the indie folk world’s titans. It’s not as perfect as The Crane Wife, and some might wish for a return to the old style, but the simpler, more straightforward, honest songs have a welcome place in the band’s ever-growing catalog of music.
