The Decemberists new CD The Hazards of Love is out, and it might be the best Jethro Tull album you've heard in awhile. Colin Meloy's 33 1/3 book on The Replacements' Let It Be is one of my favorites in that series; I've always wondered what took him from Paul Westerberg fandom to prog opera land. (Parabasis/33third)
As they switched labels and embraced a larger following, Meloy et al.’s ambitions for their material have similarly grown. The songs have gotten longer, the narratives more elaborate, the lyrics thornier. Running along side of this has been music that has moved backwards from the mid-90s to take on classic rawk riffing and early prog complexity. It is in both of these spirits that The Decemberists have created The Hazards of Love, a rock opera/song cycle that takes its lyrical cues from Lord Byron and musically is deeply embedded in territory charted by The Who, Led Zepplin and (especially) Jethro Tull. The end result is an album about a love triangle in a mythical forest that you can air guitar to. This album may prove a line in the sand some of The Decemberists’ fans are unwilling to cross, but I admire it even if it is not entirely successful.
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