"The Infanta," the thunderous opening track on the Decemberists' fluid
and predictably studious Picaresque, rolls in like a ghost ship at 40
knots in a hail of cannon fire with a mad English professor at the
wheel. Colin Meloy
and his esteemed West Coast colleagues have no qualms about beginning
their third full-length record with a processional about a child
monarch, and it's a testimony to their talents as orators and
interpreters of both the absurd and the mundane that they continue to
assimilate more fans than they alienate. While Picaresque follows its
predecessor's -- the treacly Her Majesty
-- predilection for seafaring and mythology, its boot-covered feet are
more firmly planted in the present, resulting in the group's most
accessible -- and decidedly upbeat -- product to date. The rollicking
"16 Military Wives," the aforementioned "Infanta," and "The Sporting
Live" help balance the spooky atmospherics of
more reserved cuts like "From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)" and "Eli,
the Barrow Boy." The Decemberists have always excelled at midtempo
British folk-inspired dream pop, and Picaresque is no exception, as the
brooding "We Both Go Down Together," which sounds like a mist-drenched
Pacific Northwest rendering of R.E.M.'s
"Losing My Religion," and the wistful "Engine Driver" rank among the
group's finest offerings. The album concludes with the diabolical
"Mariner's Revenge Song," a Tin Pan Alley dirge/operetta reminiscent of Kurt Weill's "The Black Freighter," and the brief but intoxicating "Of Angels and Angles," a solo Meloy ballad celebrating the holy trinity of nautical lore: love, drowning, and death.