WHAT A TERRIBLE WORLD, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD

The Derivativists?

It's no secret that The Decemberists have turned their back on their more pioneering earlier folk prog sound for that of an indie rock band with their last album The King is Dead.

So, we fast forward to this new 2015 offering from the band entitled What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World. My deeper feelings that this indie band was only playing prog rock dress up all along, did little to soften the disappointment of this album.

To start off with, the first track The Singer Addresses His Audience is a musical confirmation that the band have changed and that their fans know about it and are disappointed. Regardless, "change they must" is stated in a vague sarcastic tome.

A great start it's not. Now where off to a faux sixties pop song replete with a cliched horn and string arrangement and corny lyrics that would have been apropos for a group like Spanky and Our Gang or the Cowsills. After the pop slop of Cavalry Caption where onto the third song Philomena. Philomena is a fifties pastiche of Frankie Avalon "pining songs" like his hit Venus, that comes complete with "oh-ah" girl group backing vocals. The gimmick in this song is that the narrator wants to do more with his Phelomena than just kiss her or hold her hand, and tells her so. How shocking this is in the 21st century?

After this tripe we're into some songs that fall into the indie folk rock vain that the band has purported to inform us about. Of these three, Lake Song, The Wrong Year and Till The Water's All Gone, describe relationships with missed communication and work well.

Unfortunately, the spell doesn't last long before we come across the first solo acoustic guitar song with a typical finger picked folk arrangement whose lyrics reveal a young boy that's come down from the mountain to sell his body for sex. Again, how shocking this must be for an eleven year old to hear. What annoys me most about this song is it's melody line that seems almost identical to Mark Knopfler's song Fare Thee Well Northumberland from his excellent homage album to American roots music, The Rag Picker's Dream (2003).

Indeed, the following song Better Not Wake The Baby has a bit, a very tiny bit, of Knopfler's ironic lyrical style as the narrator sings that you can do what ever you want, including gouging out an eye, as long as you "don't wake the baby!"

Anti-Summersong, Easy Come, Easy Go and Mistral are more indie folk rock songs that jump from faux bluegrass to twangy country rock. All are forgettable.

The penultimate song sounds exactly like something Neil Young would compose if his lyrics were merely trite.This solo acoustic number, backed only with harmonica played after the verses, only makes you pine for the real thing.

The album closes with another forgettable indie rock song titled A Beginning Song. A Beginning of The End Song would have been more appropriate.

After I finished listing to this disappointing album, I pulled out the originals from my collection that included Roll Back by Horslips,The Mountain by Steve Earle with the Del McCoury Band, The Rag Picker's Dream by Mark Knopfler, and Unpugged by Neil Young.

Because, there ain't nothing like the real thing baby!

I'm the last holdout, the last believer, apparently, as I continue to like this band. Look, I miss The Engine Driver as much as the next guy. So call this Picaresque Part II. What a fine piece of music is this one. What a fine piece of 60's British Invasion/psychedelia, half-ways anyways because of the folky parts. I don't get the REM comparisons, because I never listened to REM.

For those expecting the most recent Prog, replete with lightning guitars and swirling synths, etc., you'll be disappointed, possibly more disappointed even than you were with The King Is Dead. I mean, this is not even Americana. Well, not Americana Americana. It's more like Brittanica Americana. You could put few of these songs on Nuggets and no one would be the wiser. You could put a few on some British Invasion Anthology. You could put the other half anywhere, and they'd shine like a tarnished silver ring bearing one centered oval turquoise stone.

You get your usual anthemics (Make You Better, A Beginning Song) and stoner bliss (Lake Song). And some nuggets.

I dock this thing at least a star due to lack of pedal steel.

In these hyper-ad driven days, this is not a great way to build your brand. And yet I listen to the shamelessly'what, Herman's Hermits with dirty lyrics'flat-out joy of Philomena. The band is still more than capable of surprises, and this is a nice addition to their catalog.

Ah, The Decemberists. A few years ago they were darlings of the progressive folk genre, having released the very good The Crane Wife and the utterly fantastic The Hazards of Love. However, many were unhappy with their move towards the Americana pop/rock style on The King is Dead.

Now, in 2015, the band returns with a new release sporting the lengthy title What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World and they seem to be aware of the discontent from some over changing up their sound. The opening number, "The Singer Addresses His Audience" is a very plain statement from the band to those fans who have become critical of them that the change was necessary. That the band couldn't remain musically stagnant is understandable and admirable. Bands should not aspire to become creative stagnant, after all.

However, the band's response is somewhat betrayed by the fact that, on the whole, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is a bit of a retreat in terms of The Decemberists' musical direction. The album moves the band towards their pre-Crane Wife sound mixed with a bit of The King is Dead whilst going for a slightly more "polished" (read: commercially viable) indie rock direction.

That is not meant to slag the band or this release off. I think What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is a terrific album just as I also thought The King is Dead was a terrific album.

However, I must be honest - this is not a "prog" album. Many songs, like "Cavalry Captain" and the first single, "Make You Better", are enjoyably melodic pop/rock tracks and the band is very talented at making this kind of music. If you are looking for progressive folk/rock though, you will not find it here.

That said, I do think that this album will appeal to both fans of the band and to some fans of progressive rock because the songwriting remains clever with a strong emphasis on melody.

So I do recommend the album, despite the change in direction with the band's sound. Some may be disappointed because it's not a prog album, but despite that, believe it or not, the music is still good.

Highlights: "Cavalry Captain", "Make You Better", "Till The Water's All Gone", "Carolina Low", "A Beginning Song"

The first Decemberists album after a four-year recess continued in the same, mainstream direction as "The King is Dead", to the dismay of anyone who, like me, first discovered the group through their ambitious "The Hazards of Love" project in 2009. Since then the band has retooled its idiosyncratic style in pursuit of a more commercial muse, playing shorter songs with fewer eccentricities, explicitly tailored for lower common denominator NPR airplay.

There's nothing wrong with that. When properly motivated, Colin Meloy can still write incredibly well-crafted pop songs ("Make You Better") and lovely acoustic ballads ("Lake Song", and is that a Mellotron I hear over the chorus?). But the material here sounds oddly disengaged, lacking even the lightweight thread of backwoods Americana that held the "King" album loosely together.

"We had to change some", Meloy insists at the start of the album, in a narcissistic ditty transparently named "The Singer Addresses His Audience". The author denies any autobiographical bias, but I don't believe it: he's too smart not to realize the song plays like a slap in the face to longtime fans who treasured the band's originality. We get it, Colin: you've outgrown that trademark antique Victorian charm and tongue-in-cheek narrative whimsy. Change is good, but not when you're defending your weakest album to date (and still performing "The Mariner's Revenge Song" on stage).

Ironically, "The Singer Addresses..." is by far the album's strongest track: a thrilling return to form, at least musically. Elsewhere the songs too often go in one ear and out the other, and thankfully too: "Easy Come, Easy Go", as Meloy sings in the (almost) catchy rocker of the same name. That old-thyme American folk sound from "The King is Dead" resurfaces in "Carolina Low" and "Better Not Wake the Baby" (what was that you said about needing to change, Colin..?) And the band hits rock bottom in the twin nadirs of "Cavalry Captain" and "Philomena", the former sounding not unlike the worst of '80s Phil Collins (but with pithier lyrics), and the latter a fluffy pop nonentity with atypically smarmy lyrics unworthy of the pen that wrote "The Crane Wife".

Let's hope such a unique songwriter, who describes himself (in "Lake Song") as being at one time "seventeen and terminally fey", soon grows tired of career-building and reconnects with the buoyant spirit of his wayward youth.