A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

BUT IT NEVER REALLY BOTHERS ME: Since I feel like I have to wash the Idol off myself, I wanted to write a short note on the new Decemberists album, The Hazards of Love. A quick review of anything the Decemberists do is dangerous, since so much of that band's work is intentionally confounding. Consider that Hazards of Love is a concept album -- that is, an album where the track sequencing is of paramount of importance -- with an exclusive pre-release on iTunes, which defaults in album mode to jumbling the sequence into alphabetical order (and comically so -- unless properly reordered, songs that blend together are abruptly cut off, the "prelude" comes in the middle of the album, and one song's reprise precedes the song itself). Or consider the not-quite-universal subject matter of the album: a forest queen and a child-murdering widower thwart the love of a city woman for her shape-shifting woodland paramour. Consider the instrumentation: the album switches, sometimes not seamlessly, from hammered dulcimer to lap steel to full orchestra to heavy metal guitar. Consider that the band chose to leave its most instantly accessible new pop songs -- the exquisite "Valerie Plame" and "Days of Elaine," both of which demand your immediate attention -- off the album completely, selling them only as singles. And consider, when trying to dash off a quick review, that although the band does indie pop very well, a sizable portion of the band's best work is in folk songs with melodies that gestate slowly in your synapses, rewarding multiple listens.

But it's just a part of loving this band that you must have patience and accept a generous amount of ludicrousness, from the Max Fischer theatricality to the sense that at times bandleader Colin Meloy is auditioning to be the house band for a Renaissance Faire. If you can get past that stuff, The Hazards of Love is a sturdily built piece of work that, like The Crane Wife before it, manages to be improbably affecting and hummable without being too easy to digest. "The Rake's Song" is as cynical a piece as the Decemberists have ever done (other than, perhaps, "Los Angeles I'm Yours") about their most loathsome character to date, but there is still a hint of that character's insinuating charisma in the song's "all right, all right, all right" refrain. (If I'm not mistaken, "Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)" "Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)" gives the Rake's victims' account, like Son Volt's "Been Set Free" responds to the traditional "Lily Schull.") And of course, if you tune in for the soaring, melancholy choruses, "The Wanting Comes in Waves" and its reprise await. This is instantly a very good album, and it could become great with a few more weeks' attention. Well worth the $9.99.

Changing the topic slightly, it occurs to me that we haven't had this thread in a while: to what are you listening right now, other than the Barbara Mandrell-Frankenstein Carrie Underwood-Randy Travis duet?