The Decemberists "The Crane Wife" [2006]

I know it wouldn't be nice to describe The Decemberists' "The Crane Wife" as sounding like Green Day on their period, but I honestly don't think anyone has every described this album's sound more accurately or succinctly. This Portland-based group of post-collegiate stoners -- I know most of this may be redundant -- touch down on every folk-rock conceit from every rainy backwoods country; they're lucky that affecting the occasional fake Irish brogue hasn't gotten their ass kicked yet... by Neko Case. But it's likely most people tougher than The Decemberists -- shit, who does that leave out? -- haven't ever heard this, anyway; Irish music, in particular, is probably quite unlikely to approximate jig-fiddle music with synthesizers used by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, or at least it has for about the last 40 years. The rain-soaked barn in which "The Crane Wife" was no doubt recorded seems like one murky, sad place; this album makes fellow glum Portlanders The Shins sound like Madonna. They do rock harder than Belle and Sebastian when they want to, but that's like saying they take fewer steroids than Lance Armstrong. And even where the male-female harmonies seem to want to inflect a gaggle of geese soaring through the air migrating toward nicer climes, ultimately all The Decemberists can manage is the affect of hundreds of goose turds all the way around the pond.