The Decemberists have one thing in widespread with the contents of a college-age boy’s dorm room. Pulp Fiction is legitimately film, and I guess Infinite Jest has extra worth past being a really heavy paperweight. Some names you hear and are immediately transported to a dimension you as soon as may exist in and suppose wow, this slice of the universe is sort of a carnival I by no means need to depart! Then time elapses, you become older, the world itself widens, you acquire perspective, and people items of artwork that despatched your mind flying in several instructions appear smaller, extra quaint, and stereotypically pretentious. Her Majesty The Decemberists, launched 20 years in the past this Saturday, is a type of issues.

Between Her Majesty The Decemberists, its 2002 predecessor Castaways And Cutouts, and the Portland collective’s 5 Songs EP, my high-school thoughts noticed by way of time and house, coming into a brand new galaxy of theatrical, intellectual indie pop, hyper-literary, sea-shanty lyrics, a prominently featured accordionist, and a professorial-looking frontman, Colin Meloy.

In my previous Volvo 850, I used to drive round Central Jersey sounding out “Finiculi finicula finiculi finicula” and “I do know New York I want New York/ I do know I want distinctive New York” with the form of self-seriousness you might be solely allowed to have between the ages of 15-25. Then the remainder of your life occurs and sure formative albums, books, and films get slotted into the class of “I assume you simply needed to be there.” Different items of media on this realm embrace something by Charles Bukowski, Donnie Darko, The Catcher In The Rye, getting excessive and listening to The Darkish Facet Of The Moon, and bragging about not proudly owning a TV or a mobile phone.

In case you’d guess I don’t nonetheless love Her Majesty The Decemberists based mostly on these observations, you’d be incorrect. I can nonetheless order a gin and tonic whereas nursing recollections of a school semester spent overseas in London (when a G&T was my go-to drink). However will I get the identical expertise out of that drink at 36 versus 20? Probably not — in no way.

Wanting again, the Decemberists are probably the most Portland bands to ever Portland in Portland. By 2003, Colin Meloy (vocals, guitar), Jenny Conlee (keyboard, accordion), Chris Funk (guitar, pedal metal), Jesse Emerson (electrical and upright bass) and Rachel Blumberg (drums, vox) had discovered an surprising wave of native and important success from Castaways And Cutouts (a extra satisfying, darkly poignant, and traditional album throughout, in my view). The band obtained signed to Olympia indie incubator Kill Rock Stars, reissued Castaways And Cutouts, and set about recording a follow-up, Her Majesty.

In comparison with its predecessor, the 11-song Her Majesty (containing artwork by Meloy’s now-wife, Carson Ellis) is brighter, cleaner, higher produced, and extra upbeat. It’s additionally much less cohesive than Castaways, an album that made a greater case for what the Decemberists are promoting: On the ambling, majestic, and aching cuts like “Odalisque,” “Cocoon,” and the beautiful minor-key voyage “Right here I Dreamt I Was An Architect,” you may virtually envision the band floating aimlessly on their nineteenth century boat, by way of the fog and doldrums. On Castaways, the band embodies their vivid tales; on Her Majesty, they maintain them at arm’s size.

Produced by Portland’s Larry Crane (founding father of Tape Op journal and archivist for the Elliott Smith property), Her Majesty presents a a lot jauntier, extra literal Decemberists. Opener “Shanty For The Arethusa” marches and rumbles with scene-setting accordion and parading snare drum. It takes a dramatic pause midway by way of, moderately like that pompous good friend within the group who insists on holding everybody captive with elaborate, name-droppy tales.

Talking of jaunt, “Billy Liar” introduces us to a peeping tom who seems to be jerking it whereas “staring over on the neighbor’s knickers down.” Now that I give it some thought, “Billy Liar” is only a highfalutin model of the Ass Ponys’ “Little Bastard.” That’s what Meloy means by “no-good boyo,” proper? Compositionally, nonetheless, “Billy Liar” sounds jolly and vivacious sufficient to look previous Meloy including three extra syllables to the phrase “acquainted” till it appears like familiaruerueroy.

Hey, bear in mind how cool it was once to dunk on Los Angeles? Loss of life Cab For Cutie had “Why You’d Need to Dwell Right here” in 2001, and Elliott Smith had “Angeles” in 1997. No self-respecting good particular person would ever demean themselves by spending time in a “metropolis by the ocean” crammed with “orphans and oligarchs,” “burnt cocaine,” and “iniquity and tears.” The imagery of “an ocean’s garbled vomit on the shore” remains to be fairly humorous, I’ll give Meloy that.

The grandiosity of those and songs just like the slow-rising “I Was Meant For The Stage,” the Dickensian “Chimbley Sweep,” the looping “Tune For Myla Goldberg” (in regards to the Bee Season writer, who as soon as met Meloy in Portland however doesn’t bear in mind), and the bouncy, horn-accented “The Soldiering Life” (which refers to a brother in arms as “a bombazine doll”) have not aged like oak-casked brandy, although they’re nonetheless nice to get pleasure from whereas remembering that point.

I discussed earlier that the primary grievance round Her Majesty is that it’s uneven. To that finish, pared-down, acoustic ruminations just like the finger-picked “Crimson Proper Ankle,” the strummed “The Bachelor And The Bride,” and the extra freewheeling, Tin Pan Alley-esque nearer “As I Rise” have aged rather more gracefully, primarily as a result of they don’t really feel so tryhard in 2023.

A part of the issue shouldn’t be what Her Majesty is (or was). It’s every part to do with what this extremely aestheticized kind of indie rock turned and what it represents at the moment. You see, a band that carved out a spot singing elaborate, conceptual ditties about historical past has fallen sufferer to historical past. The Decemberists began out mixing jangly college-rock with British and Irish people music, then turned so profitable that they signed to Capitol Information and by accident(?) spawned millennial-cringe traditions like stomp-clap music, knitted beards, mustache finger tattoos, barn weddings, and mason-jar cocktails ready by suspenders-wearing mixologists. They began out as NPR and ultimately landed at NBC.

None of that is the Decemberists’ fault. Numerous conceptual crap was fashionable within the 2000s: Dresden Dolls, Arcade Hearth, and My Chemical Romance all come to thoughts. It’s not the band’s fault that so many individuals appreciated them that quickly each guitar participant needed to additionally play the glockenspiel and/or mandolin and name themselves Freelance Whales, which later gave method to the Lumineers and Mumfords of the world. Taken individually, none of this stuff are so dangerous. However put collectively, they illustrate the form of one that nonetheless posts meals images to their Instagram grid and poses for Christian Lady Autumn.

Regardless of all that cultural baggage, I nonetheless love the Decemberists: songs like “Crimson Proper Ankle,” “July, July!,” “Odalisque,” “Cocoon,” “Right here I Dreamt I Was An Architect,” and “Shiny” shepherded me out of highschool and into liberal arts school — a develop home for dense, overwrought poetry… and something the Decemberists would possibly launch. The band’s early work is a time capsule, a 2000s message in a bottle. I’m simply unsure they ever meant on being one.