The first time I listened to the Decemberists I was in a car hurtling up I95 in Maine, heading to Gray-New Gloucester school. It was an inauspicious beginning, as I was underwhelmed. Not surprising—I've been wrong before on a first listen, though never quite so wrong as then.
Being a writer, I'm a lyric man, and singer/songwriter Colin Meloy makes the writing effortless, weaving in such words as ventricle and eidolon into his lyrics in such a way that they seem foundational, as opposed to flow...