The Decemberists - I'll Be Your Girl (Album Review)
Tuesday, 20 March 2018
Written by Graeme Marsh
Photo: Holly Andres
On their eighth studio album, ‘I’ll Be Your Girl’, the Decemberists have taken a substantial risk. To a large extent, their folky, quirky core has disappeared and in its place you’ll find something unusual: synthesizers. In the words of frontman Colin Meloy, they experimented with “a lot of weird keyboards”.
The lead single, Severed, offered an excellent introduction to the new sound. Twanging guitars and pulsing synths are a combination you wouldn’t normally expect on a Decemberists track, but it worked brilliantly and gave hope of a massive album to follow. The opener here, Once In My Life, is also impressive, melding acoustic guitars with punchy, ‘80s-style electronica. “Could something just go right?” Meloy pleads.
From then on, though, results vary. The loveable eccentricity the band have provided on numerous occasions in the past is revived on We All Die Young, but the song’s glam rock stomp only ends up at a grating chorus.
The undeniably catchy Everything is Awful also revisits old traits as Meloy’s frustration at, well, everything currently happening in the world boils over. But the repetition of the word everything – it features over 75 times – is infuriating.
Starwatcher sounds like something Billy Bragg would perform, if its political content were more blatant, while the galloping Your Ghost is merely adequate, an all too common feeling here. A couple of songs are loose soundalikes that don’t fare well by comparison: Sucker’s Prayer has an intro that conjures a folk take on Oasis’s Champagne Supernova and I’ll Be Your Girl is like an uninspiring version of Lynn Anderson’s Rose Garden.
Things pick up noticeably with the eight minute behemoth Rusalka, Rusalka/Wild Rushes. Here the Decemberists meld two songs together in an epic that builds to something deeply powerful before turning to folky acoustics, like the unfolding of a deliberately paced storyline.
Escaping from your comfort zone doesn’t always yield results and ‘I’ll Be Your Girl’ is, perhaps unsurprisingly, hit and miss. At times, things turn out rather well but, unfortunately, the highlights are outweighed by songs that feel like lazy nonentities. It certainly gives the band food for thought, and an interesting decision to make: do they continue to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, or do they return to what they do best? The next chapter will be an interesting one.
The Decemberists Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sun November 04 2018 - DUBLIN Vicar Street
Mon November 05 2018 - GLASGOW O2 Academy Glasgow
Wed November 07 2018 - LONDON Eventim Apollo
Thu November 08 2018 - BRISTOL O2 Academy Bristol
Sat November 10 2018 - LEEDS O2 Academy Leeds
Sun November 11 2018 - NOTTINGHAM Rock City
Mon November 12 2018 - MANCHESTER Albert Hall
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