World's Shortest Fairy Tale
Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl 'Will you marry me?' The girl said, 'NO!', and the guy lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and went fishing and hunting and played golf a lot and drank beer and scotch and had tons of money in the bank and left the toilet seat up and farted whenever he wanted.
The End.
The Decemberists: Hazards of Love Review
The Decemberists are hard to classify. If I had to put a label on them, they'd fall somewhere in the "hyperliterate-epic-prog-folk-maritime-medieval-fairy tale" category. Their last two major releases, Picaresque and The Crane Wife, have built upon each other, and that progression has led naturally to their latest release, The Hazards of Love. Whereas The Crane Wife was a loose collection of songs held together by a 3 song concept suite, Hazards of Love is a 60 minute, full-on concept rock opera from start to finish.
The narrative can be a bit obtuse and open for interpretation, so I'm not even going to attempt an explanation here. Suffice to say, it's a love story involving a shape-shifter, infanticide, and the promising of one's life to the waters. In the end though it does hang together and start to make sense upon repeated listenings. As for the music, there aren't a lot of memorable hooks here as on some of their previous works, but the hooks have been replaced with interesting, varied music that best serves the story. There are moments of pure 70's prog rock in the Jethro Tull/Yes vein, to quiet acoustic interludes.
The standout track here is the closer, Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned). It's a beautiful, heartbreaking song about the two lovers, William and Margaret, and their last moments as their ship sinks beneath the waves. It's my favorite song of the year thus far, and is going to be hard to knock off that pedestal. The album as a whole is The Decemberists most ambitious work, one that's highly satisfying and grows on you with each listening. It's that rare gem that's meant to be heard as a complete work, in a quiet room, from start to finish. For my money, this is the most interesting and inventive band around these days. I can't wait to see where they go from here.
Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)
Live version of Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)
Streaming audio of The Decemberists debuting Hazards of Love in its entirety at SXSW
Tribute To My Grandfather
Below is a link to a slideshow I created as a tribute to the life of my late grandfather, Joe Twardovski. You may need to download a browser plugin to view it:
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