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The Decemberists - 5 Songs CD (album) cover

5 SONGS

The Decemberists

 

Prog Folk

2.27 | 20 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Neu!mann
Prog Reviewer
2 stars Ignoring their year 2009 masterpiece "The Hazards of Love" (and the better parts of "The Crane Wife" album), The Decemberists were never really a Progressive Rock band. What earned them a seat at the ProgArchives table was an eccentric Indie/Alt Rock sound crossbred with occasional closet Prog tendencies, few of which were apparent in their first EP, released in 2001.

Instead, the mini-album offered a pleasant but tentative calling card, announcing the arrival of a natural songwriter with a knack for easy hooks and eccentric storylines. Even in this larval stage of development Colin Meloy's adenoidal whimsy was an acquired taste. Ditto his usual cast of oddball characters, including King George "in imperial robe and lazy eye"; an Asian circus performer smuggling arms to the French underground; and a stolen bicycle named Madeline.

And of course there's Meloy himself, the band's colorful ringleader and self-described "ne'er-do-well": a literate wordsmith still in search of his lyrical groove, for the moment not above trying to rhyme 'corduroy' with 'Polaroid'. Missing in this beginner's sampler is the band's trademark vaudeville theatricality, although the song "My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist" anticipates in embryonic form the gaslight melodramas of later Decemberist narratives.

Meloy was quixotic enough to keep the EP's original title after adding a sixth song to the package. Either way, there's little here to suggest a group headed for anything more than cult success. In the end it's an enjoyable but hardly distinguished first effort, painting an honest portrait of the band's less ambitious musical aspirations.

Neu!mann | 2/5 |

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