In 2006, THE DECEMBERISTS released The Crane Wife. It was a beefy, radio-friendly indie-rock record, and a stark contrast to the band’s past work, which reveled in acoustic beauty and singer Colin Meloy’s rich story telling abilities. Hazards of Love takes the Portland band further away from their humble folk beginnings, sonically and lyrically.

THE DECEMBERISTS have always written story-songs, but Hazards of Love is much more than a handful of loosely connected literary tunes. Hazards of Love is an out and out concept album in all the glory and pretension that label implies. The lyrics on Hazards of Love are so confusedly complex they beg for cliff note accompaniment. From what I can gather, the album is about a princess named Margaret who discovers an injured fawn. The princess attempts to help the fawn only to have it transform into a man named William, who quickly fornicates with the Cinderella-type. Apparently William forgot to use protection, because in result of their magical coitus, Margaret is impregnated, and pushed into a tale of deceit and lost love.

Colin Meloy captures the fantastical tale with his brand of faux old-english poetry, telling stories melodically over a puzzling musical concoction of cock-rock metal and folk. Lines like “When wilt thou trouble the water in the cistern” sound goofy over crunchy palm-muted guitars; tying Shakespearian language to BLACK SABBATH-esque savagery is interesting in theory, but sounds fairly silly in execution. “The Rake’s Song” actually works well, beginning with the rattle of an acoustic guitar, the quiet destroyed by thunderous drums and haunting lyrics about a father murdering his children: “Dawn was easy / She was drowned in the bath / Isaiah fought but was easily bested / Burned his body for incurring my Wrath.”

After giving the album a few spins, Hazards of Love falls somewhere in-between pretentious and remarkably ambitious. The band deserves much respect for attempting to create a metallic-opus considering their wussy acoustic past; definitely didn’t see this one coming. At the same time, the lyrics on this album are impossibly dense, and the music has more in common with “Phantom of the Opera” than NEIL YOUNG; writing this review felt more like composing an english paper than critiquing pop-music, evidence that THE DECEMBERISTS might have gone a little over board. If you dug THE DECEMBERISTS of yore for their sound, then you might not be into Hazards of Love. However if you’ve followed the band because of Meloy’s knack for story telling, put on a pot of coffee and hit play. It’s going to be a long night.

Capitol

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