The Discography of The Decemberists: A Beginning Guide

Trying to figure out where to start with Portland's most literary prog-folk band? We've got you covered.

In a couple of weeks, The Decemberists will release their first LP in six years, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again. With over 20 years and an ornate library’s worth of albums behind them, it can be hard to know where to get started with Portland’s foremost prog-folk outfit, so I’ve put my years of fandom to use by creating this handy guide to their discography. If you’re looking to dip your toes into the highly-literate waters of Colin Meloy and Co., read on to discover where you should start your journey.

Albums are presented alphabetically.

Castaways and Cutouts (2002)

Are you still mad about Dylan going electric? If so, Castaways and Cutouts, the most singer-songwriterly entry in Decemberists canon, might be for you.¹ The band’s debut full-length followed on the heels of 2001’s 5 Songs EP² and both are deeply acoustic affairs that hint at Meloy’s melodic prowess without utilizing the wide array of instrumental flavors that the band would later incorporate into their sound.

The Crane Wife (2006)

Do you have a stack of translated novels on your nightstand? If so, the band’s fourth full-length might be for you. Meloy stretched his narrative ambition³ across oceans with The Crane Wife which revolves around two eponymous tracks⁴ that trace a Japanese folktale. The elegant intro to that tale, as told in “The Crane Wife 1,” is among the band’s best songs. Elsewhere on the album, the band tackles the German siege of Leningrad with appropriate violence (“When the War Came”) and a string of politically motivated murders in Northern Ireland with eerie reserve (“Shankill Butchers”). When you’re ready to settle in with The Crane Wife, you’ll want to break out not only your headphones, but your reading light, too.

The Hazards of Love (2009)

Are your James Taylor vinyls wedged between copies of Quadrophenia and In the Court of the Crimson King? If so, rock opera The Hazards of Love might be for you. Hazards dramatically amplifies the narrative thrust of prior Decemberists records⁵; instead of individual songs telling individual stories, the totality of Hazards tells the tale of a woman named Margaret, her shape-shifting lover, and the Forest Queen who would keep them apart. There are tender acoustic moments, as you’d expect from prior Decemberists releases, but there are also moments of bone-crunching hard rock. Plus, guest vocalist Shara Nova, playing the aforementioned Forest Queen, delivers an unforgettably powerful turn as a vengeful deity. You can listen to Hazards casually, but you shouldn’t. This one is for the nerds.

Her Majesty the Decemberists (2003)

Are you a former drama kid who now spends a lot of time in independent coffee shops? If so, you’ll likely find something to like in Her Majesty. Acoustic indie tracks like “Los Angeles, I’m Yours,” “Song for Myla Goldberg,” and “Red Right Ankle” seemed designed to be heard over your morning macchiato, while the late-album back-to-back combo of “The Chimbley Sweep” and “I Was Meant for the Stage” have unrestrained levels of theater kid energy. Her Majesty has some contemplative moments, but those two songs have such big feelings that they pull the entire album along with them.

I’ll Be Your Girl (2018)

Do you own a synth and also a bummer outlook on the world? If so, then I’ll Be Your Girl, which is both synthier and more lyrically pessimistic than anything else in the band’s catalog, might be the Decemberists album for you. Deciding that they wanted to mix things up, Meloy and Co. bought a bunch of synthesizers while working on their eighth full-length, and the result is an odd twist on their typically folksy sound. Songs on I’ll Be Your Girl are also much simpler lyrically that on other Decemberists records, but that simplicity does not equate to lyrical joy. The album’s opening track asks, “Oh, for once in my life … could just something go right?” Later tracks feature a “dying bride” and someone being left “all severed.” And, in what I assume to be a return volley against The Lego Movie’s “Everything Is Awesome,” the album’s seventh track is simply and aptly titled “Everything is Awful.” The body count may be higher on other Decemberists records,⁶ but the overwhelming sentiment of despair has never been higher even as the sonic vibes are good (and synthy).

The King Is Dead (2011)

Do you love late-summer barbeques, corn mazes, and other embodiments of the harvest season? If so, The King is Dead, in which the Decemberists manifest the spirit of Americana, will be to your liking. “Don’t Carry It All” so fully executes on a certain vision of American music—thumping rhythms, heavily-strummed acoustic guitars, and a healthy dose of harmonica—that it’s downright shocking that the song was written in 2011 rather than 1811. And if your version of Americana involves campfire singalongs, it would be hard to pick a more fitting track than “June Hymn” and its unparalleled harmonies—for my money, the harmony at the end of the bridge (“will I bring myself to write”) is the best in the band’s entire catalog. Of course, few things are more American than war, and The King is Dead closes with two inspections of that ancient trade: “This Is Why We Fight,” named after propaganda materials from WWII,⁷ tells a war story from the frontlines, all pride and bravado, while “Dear Avery” tells the story from home, simply hoping that a soldier—your soldier—returns. That’s a rather American sentiment, too, come to think of it.

Picaresque (2005)

Are you an English major and therefore obsessed with short stories?⁸ If so, Picaresque might be for you. At the very least, and unlike everyone else you know, you won’t have to reach for a dictionary to understand the album’s title.⁹ Picaresque features some of the band’s most focused storytelling, with a number of songs containing razor-sharp, water-tight narratives, built on the foundation of some of the band’s most endearing arrangements. “Eli, the Barrow Boy” is perfectly somber, “16 Military Wives” strikes the ideal balance between bounce and ballast, and “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” has become the stuff of indie legend. The album’s penultimate track follows a young man from disaster through disaster until his final (disastrous) revenge, though much of the song’s lore is centered on its recording: The band reportedly recorded the nearly nine-minute song in a single take around a single microphone, moving closer or father away to intensify or soften any given vocal or instrument. For that epic and others, Picaresque might be the album that best captures all of the Decemberists’ many flavors.

What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World (2015)

Okay, so Picaresque wants you to be an English major but what if you’re an actual college professor? An honest-to-God, tweed-wearing, history-loving, oddly-perverse-sense-of-humor-having college professor? Well, with their 2015 release, the Decemberists have you covered, too. What a Terrible World has some of the Decemberists’ most richly arranged material, with songs like “Make You Better,” “Mistral,” and “A Beginning Song” feeling timeless in their combination of approachability and depth. There’s also the album’s quirky humor, including the fourth-wall-breaking “The Singer Addresses His Audience” as well as the lascivious “Philomena” and the parental black comedy of “Better Not Wake the Baby.” And we couldn’t call an album professorial without historical tragedy, so naturally we’ve got “12/17/12” which tries to reconcile the joy of having your own children with you and the pain of knowing that others have been robbed of that privilege. It’s heady and heartfelt and masterfully done. Like all of The Decemberists’ catalog, actually. I suppose you could really start anywhere in their discography and be fine. Huh.

1. The album was reissued in 2003, hence that being listed as the release year in Spotify.

2. Fun fact: 5 Songs now features six songs, as “Apology Song” was added when the EP was re-released in 2003.

3. And boy did he have narrative ambition: Meloy has since published five novels, including 2011’s Wildwood, which spent some time on the New York Times’ best seller list.

4. Or maybe three? I’m not quite sure how to total up “The Crane Wife 1 & 2” + “The Crane Wife 3”.

5. You can make a case that 2004’s The Tain was something of a proto-Hazards as it’s a single-track EP in five movements telling a continuous story. (Some iterations of that release are broken into five tracks, in conjunction with the movements.) Because The Tain is technically an EP, I didn’t include it above, but I love that record. It’s got more creative heft in its 19 minutes than many records can fit into runtimes three times as long.

6. Now that I’ve brought it up, I’m (appropriately) dying to know which Decemberists record actually does have the highest body count. It’s a tough question, because an awful lot of characters seem to die in these songs. Sadly, there wasn’t room in the S&S budget to further investigate. Firing from the hip, I’d guess Picaresque. As detailed above, The Crane Wife is thick with war stories, but Picaresque kills off five military men in “16 Military Wives,” two lovers in “We Both Go Down Together,” the mother and the rake (and likely the narrator) in “The Mariner’s Revenge Song,” and a few more to boot. That’s one hell of a fatality rate for a folk record.

7. Also named after those materials: the first Gatsbys American Dream record. You can abhor the sentiment of the propaganda, but you can’t deny its poetry.

8. My fellow Story Club with George Saunders subscribers qualify here as well.

9. For the rest of us, from Dictionary.com: “relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero.”