Aural Pleasure, The First Day of Xmas

On the first day of Xmas my AP gave to me ... A Decemberist in a Folk Tree. Oh man, did I just give it away, if I've learned (stolen) anything from other blogs doing this sort of thing is that you don't give away the actual item until after the jump. Oh well, this is my first go, there's bound to be kinks. So here we go, my first favorite of the year.

 The King Is Dead - The Decemberists

In a perfect world everyone would know who The Decemberists are and I wouldn't feel compelled to add them to my lists, since I would think "Ah everyone knows about them, they're on everyone else's list so I'll just add Tiger Army's rock opera retelling of Teen Wolf instead." I said this was a perfect world right? But here we are, and if the theme of this year is surprise, well what's the surprise about this album? It's not that it was good, because it's the fucking Decemberists we're talking about here and they never make bad albums. The surprise was that it was such a straight forward folk album.

Let me explain, if you had been listening to the Decemberists over the years, and by all rights you should have, then you know that they continuously delve deeper and deeper into the progressive side of things. What do I mean by that? Well they've always had their badass folk/rock chops, but they also experimented with every other genre under the sun, along with every song structure under the sun. We're talking 7 minute songs that were more like 3 songs in one, songs that led perfectly into one another, until finally it all culminated into an honest to goodness rock (folk?) opera with their last release The Hazards of Love. The surprise with The King Is Dead is that they threw all that out the window and put together a solid folk album. No real genre mixing, no songs over 5 minutes (In fact the longest song clocks in at 4:59), no prog rock, just pure straight forward folk.

If you thought that would make this record bad, well then you'd be wrong. Seems the Decemberists don't have to be experimental or progressive to be great, they can throw together 10 fantastic folk songs and still have an album that stands toe to toe with their others. Have a listen to a few of their tracks like "Rox in the Box," "January Hymn," "Down By The Water," and especially "This is Why We Fight," and try to tell me these aren't some of their best songs ever. And the same could actually be said for all of the tracks here, no kidding. So if you haven't listened to the Decemberists before and you're a fan of great folk rock, then this is a perfect place to start. Seriously, get on it, this is my gift to you, Merry Xmas.