Excursions

Artist: The Decemberists
Album: The Hazards of Love
Year: 2009

In the battle for the pop artist’s attention, the melody of a song usually ends up dominating the lyrics. The cost of this fight is usually an infantile rhyme like “Those who are dead are not dead / They’re just living my head”. Thanks for that introspective examination of life and death, Coldplay. Part of me feels stupider every time I sing along to your music.

For several albums, The Decemberists have taken these two warring parties and united them, finding new and unusual melodies which they then use to tell wonderfully verbose stories, like their interpretation of an old Chinese myth on “The Crane Wife”. On their new release, however, they’ve indulged their literary tendencies to the extent that listening to the album feels like listening to a musical. Melody is subservient to the story. There are sudden changes in tempo and mood. Secondary characters are sung by secondary voices. It’s not bad, per se, but the dart is stuck at an awkward angle in the wall, where previous albums hit the bullseye.

This closing track is a happy exception to much of the rest of the album, and serves as a great teaser for other tracks like the richly illustrated “Shanty for the Arethusa” (lead off line: “We set to sail on a packet full of spice, rum, and tea leaves / We’ve emptied out all the bars and the Bowery hotel”) or the Wes Anderson-ish “The Sporting Life”.

Artist: The National
Album: Dark Was the Night
Year: 2009

With the opening lines of standout track “Fake Empire”, singer Matt Berninger instantly conjures images of stolen moments with friends: “Stay out super late tonight / Picking apples, making pies / Put a little something in our lemonade / And take it with us”. With his hypnotizing delivery, it takes a minute to realise they’re not your own memories.

The National are at it again, singing seductively about intoxication on “So Far Around the Bend”, a track from a benefit compilation put out by the Red Hot Organization featuring all manner of indie superstars (Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, Feist, etc. etc.). “Take a bath and get high through an apple” Matt sings, before venturing into New York to search for a lost friend.

“I’ll run through a thousand parties
I’ll run through a million bars
Nobody knows where you are living
Nobody knows where you are”

Artist: Alfonso Velez
Album: The Weather
Year: 2009

I was sitting by myself in a bar early on a Saturday night a few weeks ago, waiting to hear my friend Alisdair play a set downstairs at The National Underground. In front of me was a guy strumming a guitar, playing a wonderful mix of folk and blues. Given it was 7pm and the location was New York, where many people had probably finished brunch just an hour ago, there were only 7 or 8 other people at the bar. The place was empty.

As I sat there, I got drawn more and more into the music. The artist, Alfonso Velez, was a cut above the average singer-songwriter. Before one piece, he asked if anyone wanted to join him. One of his friends volunteered to play piano. Another went up to play tambourine. Before I knew it, there were 5 people up there with instruments, harmonising the vocals, creating an awesome rendition of Jealous Woman, a blues track. It was a moment I would have loved to share with someone, if for no other reason than to be able to turn to them later and say, “did that really happen?” The scene was too spontaneous, and the music too good, for real life.

In the spirit of trying to share that evening, here’s the track that leads off Alfonso Velez’s new album, The Weather. It doesn’t quite recapture the feel of his live music, but that’s just more incentive to go out and catch him in New York or DC where he’s often playing local bars.