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Home  Archive music profiles Lessons in Volcabulary With the Decemberists
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Lessons in Volcabulary With the Decemberists |
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Written by Sean Moeller
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Friday, 16 December 2005 |
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Some of the
words the native Montanan uses in his toppling slugs of antique-ish
trains are ones Mark Twain would have had to amble over to his corner
bookshelf, take his dictionary from its hole, and thumb through it to
find.
Bringing things like zoot suits and trucker hats back into the loving
eyes of society is never really so far gone from possibility that a
scene-stealing turn by an A-lister in a blockbuster movie, or the
remorseless bludgeoning of the look by a small-town Iowan, who now
makes a living fooling with celebrity vanities, their rides, their
homes, their egos, and their ex-wives. Those are easy to re-implement,
although, I’m not sure trucker hats were ever chic outside of trucker
circles or that Ashton Kutcher is the guy we should thank for their
image reversal—but we’re not here to argue apples and oranges.
Concepts can become new again. The idea of opening doors for women can
still make a comeback, no matter how discourteous we all get. But a
band like Portland, Oregon’s The Decemberists are bringing back
language. The outdated and trivial language we have no use for anymore.
A lot of the time, we aren’t all that sure what frontman Colin Meloy is
talking about. The beauty of that is that we don’t have to. We’re not
supposed to know what he’s talking about. We no longer live in a world
where wagon trains are still as futuristic as the Internet. Some of the
words the native Montanan uses in his toppling slugs of antique-ish
trains are ones Mark Twain would have had to amble over to his corner
bookshelf, take his dictionary from its hole, and thumb through it to
find.
“ I don’t usually have people coming up to me at shows
and asking what certain words mean,” Meloy said recently from the
backseat of the band’s tour van as it traveled through the expanses of
Texas. “I never write something and think, ‘This word will get people
scrambling to a dictionary.’ But I do think it appeals to the nerdier
variety of people, like myself, who appreciate that extra challenge.”
He’s dusted off bombazine (a twilled or corded cloth made of silk and
wool or of cotton and wool) and stevedore (one who loads or unloads
vessels) in “The Soldiering Life,” bagatelle (anything trifling; a game
played by striking balls with a cue) in “The Legionnaire’s Lament” and
samovar (a copper urn for making tea) in “Part II” from the band’s
newest EP, The Tain. Try using those in the grocery store check-out
line, or in casual conversation with the convenience store attendant,
during that empty time between the swiping of your credit card and
handing you the pen, the next time you fill your car up with gas.
Meloy has taken interest in the lifestyles and attitudes of 19th
century England and made them exotic. He’s retro-erotic; listening to
any of the band’s two full-lengths or two EPs carries with it the
enchanted sense that could come with opening a mothballed cedar trunk
that’s been sealed, untouched in the attic for the last four decades.
The music is musky but familiar, and the lines he sings—so sweet and
airy—feel as if they would crumble like a sugar cube or dried-out rose
petal if they were touched with bare hands. And yet, there’s something
tangible and universally understood in the chestnuts that The
Decemberists roast.
“ I guess there’s really no accounting for
it,” Meloy says of the band’s growing popularity—a popularity that
recently allowed him to quit his job working at a bookstore and live
solely as a working musician. “It’s just a story. I think there’s
something you can relate to if you dig into it a little bit. It’s not
that I really slave over it to make it apparent.”
The way
Meloy came into his style of songwriting, turning anachronistic, is
much the same way that led Chris Ballew of the Presidents of the United
States of America to shuck two strings off of his bass and three
strings off of his guitar in the late ’90s: a boredom with traditional
methods.
“ I just got to the point where I’d explored all the
corners of traditional pop songwriting and I needed something to keep
me interested,” he said. “I didn’t really expect anyone to listen to
these songs. We didn’t start with that goal (of scoring fans) in mind.
I think the way we got here was pretty unconventional. We weren’t doing
it with the intent of appealing to a wide audience and making a lot of
money.”
Recently releasing The Tain on Spanish label Acuarela,
The Decemberists tack together a loose interpretation of an Irish myth
of the same name that shows the band in a crunchier garb than they’ve
ever worn. Produced by Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla (who
is also the intended producer of their next full-length, to be recorded
this summer), the record churns and tears through another tale of
suffering soldiers and widows. It features, for the first time, the
lead vocal duties of drummer Rachel Blumberg, playing the widow. A
concentric whir of Rhodes organ or accordion from the work desk of
Jenny Conlee fashions the signature, along with Meloy’s scholarly
sounding (it doesn’t seem possible to hear such a thing, but it’s
striking in his case), high-end vocals to each Decemberists number.
It’s the only conventionality in what the band—rounded out by upright
bassist Nate Query and pedal steel player Chris Funk—does musically. To
many a fan’s surprise, Meloy is exceedingly normal aside from some odd
pursuits here and there.
“ I get the feeling that people
expect me to be a weird guy,” he said. “I’m a pretty conventional
person, but I’m thinking of taking up model ship building. My days
[since quitting at the bookstore] feel empty and void. We’ll see where
else my aspirations take me.”
The Decemberists play Mojo’s in Columbia on April 3.
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