THE DECEMBERISTS

The King Is Dead

[Capitol]

Decemberists leader Colin Meloy has a flair for fanciful storytelling—but because America is too young to have produced its own ancient folklore, he and his cohorts tend to look elsewhere for inspiration. On its last two albums the band drew on Japanese and European traditions, creating elaborate fairy-tale song cycles. On first listen, The King Is Dead seems the opposite: a collection of scaled-back Americana tunes with no unifying storyline. The songs are short and straightforward, Meloy’s penchant for $50 vocabulary words notwithstanding.

In its own way, though, the Decemberists’ latest is a concept album—one about the American character. The country ballad “Rise to Me” and granite-miner singalong “Rox in the Box” are testaments to individualism and self-sufficiency, ideas Meloy’s narrators seem ready to die for. A similar ruggedness informs the post-apocalyptic fantasy “Calamity Song,” one of several tracks featuring R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck. The tune, powered by Buck’s signature 12-string, is about rising from the ruins and rebuilding society from scratch—it’s the end of the world as we know it, and Meloy feels fine.

But America isn’t just for the hard and solitary. On “Don’t Carry It All,” a number reminiscent of Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” Meloy and guest vocalist Gillian Welch sing of community pride and farmers helping farmers. On “June Hymn,” the group celebrates the majesty of unpaved landscape. The country Meloy presents is beautiful and ugly, warlike and compassionate. As this fine album attests, it’s as worthy of mythologizing as anyplace else. –Kenneth Partridge