The Decemberists - The King Is Dead

After 2009’s rugged and sometimes rambling Hazards of Love, Colin Meloy and his ragtag band of literary misfits have traded folk-operas for their most straight-up pop record yet. It’s still the Decemberists but it’s sort of a Decemberists Lite - all the same whimsy and story-telling but packaged up into a more accessible, tighter and country-tinged record. But saying it’s Decemberists Lite is doing quite a disservice to the record since, in re-evaluating the grandness and ambition of their output, the band seemed to have struck on a golden formula - one that makes The King Is Dead perhaps their best and most complete record since Picaresque.