The Decemberists: The Hazards Of Love

By: David Schultz

Love it or hate it, we are all responsible for The Hazards Of Love. Colin Meloy had a large hand in its creation and will probably get all the credit but we all shoulder some responsibility. In heaping scores of lavish praise upon Meloy’s fanciful fairy tales replete with drownings, murders and imagery ripped from a Jane Austen novel, The Hazards Of Love is the album we’ve all goaded Meloy and The Decemberists into making. The Decemberists' latest may not be for everyone. Full of the conceit, confidence and hubris inherent in every concept album, The Hazards Of Love is one of the more challenging and most satisfying releases to come around in years.

The Decemberists have created a rock opera in every sense of the word. In creating a fractured fairy tale that combines the fantasy of a Narnia Chronicle with the fatalism of a Shakespearian tragedy, Meloy tells the tale of a swan named Margaret and her star-crossed lover, a shape shifting faun of adopted royal heritage. Far from a straight narrative (or as linear a tale as the rock opera construct lends itself to), Meloy engages in a little Lost-style back story reveal and employs a ghostly children’s chorus to provide a fitting fin de siècle for the self-obsessed villain.

Always a playful wordsmith, Meloy runs a gamut of intricate wordplay, pretentious affectations and the occasional head-scratcher of a phrase (what exactly is a corn crake crow?). Nobody writes a song about drowning like Meloy and “The Hazards Of Love 4 (The Drowned),” the emotional tearjerker that closes the album and concludes the story, may well be the crowning achievement of the bespectacled songwriter’s fascination with watery deaths. Unifying the album’s seventeen songs into a coherent narrative, Meloy weaves concisely descriptive images and musical themes throughout Hazards, employing recurrences of “The Wanting Comes In Waves” and the four variations of “The Hazards Of Love” to heighten the dramatic effect. Aiding in the storytelling, Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond brings a sweetness and naïveté to the heroine Margaret and Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond gives voice to the treacherous Queen Mother’s feelings of scorn and betrayal.

A group effort, The Hazards Of Love gets by on more than Meloy’s creativity and wit. Drummer John Moen and bassist Nate Query transition many of the songs, helping transform the many pieces into a grand suite with smooth and deft tempo changes. Although the acoustic guitars dips a little too far into Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead Or Alive” playbook on “Margaret In Captivity,” Meloy and Chris Funk’s exquisite guitar work invoke the bucolic forest environs in “The Hazards Of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle The Thistles Undone),” devotion in the face of hopeless obstacles in “Annan Water” and the urgent rush of blood through the heart of the dastardly in “The Abduction Of Margaret.” When you factor in Jenny Conlee’s deliciously heavy prog-rock organ passages and the judicious sprinkling of harpsichord, mandolin and a Nashville-style pedal steel that appears at the end of “Isn't It A Lovely Night,” The Hazards Of Love pulls off the task of making the most indulgent aspect of the Seventies seem remarkably vital and alive.

The Wall inspires great introspection, Tommy gets the fists pumping and A Passion Play simply baffles, The Hazards Of Love is a near-literary achievement. For packing an understated emotional punch and engendering sympathy for its main characters over the course of a one hour album, Meloy deserves serious praise. Prog-rock indulgences and bizarre story lines aside, Meloy and The Decemberists have put together a momentous album.