The Crane Wife

1	The Crane Wife, Pt. 3 4:18
2	The Island: Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel the ... 12:26
3	Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) 4:18
4	O Valencia! 3:47
5	The Perfect Crime No. 2 5:33
6	When the War Came 5:06
7	Shankill Butchers 4:39
8	Summersong 3:31
9	The Crane Wife, Pts. 1 & 2 11:19
10	Sons & Daughters 5:13

Barnes & Noble

The Decemberists have carved out a unique aesthetic. Beginning with their first album, 2002's Castaways and Cutouts, Colin Meloy and crew sang in ornate vocabulary of archaic characters; they peopled their albums with child princesses, lusty sailors, and chimney sweeps and set the tales to lilting folk-rock orchestration. Meloy's gift for memorable, lovely melodies made what could be rather precious into something rather brilliant. All those characteristic elements can be found on The Crane Wife (the Portland, Oregon, band's fourth album and first for a major label), but so can some surprises. The nearly 13-minute "The Island" is unabashedly prog-rock: Its multi-part structure, dramatic electric guitar arpeggios, heavy keyboards, and elaborate strings place it in the tradition of hoary bands like Gentle Giant, and it's closer to the Decemberists' 2004 EP The Tain than to anything else in their catalog. "When the War Came," "The Crane Wife 1 and 2," and "The Perfect Crime #2" are similarly weighty and/or extravagant. But The Crane Wife also includes some of the Decemberists' most catchy and accessible pop tunes: "The Crane Wife 3" (based on a Japanese folk tale), the jangly "Oh Valencia!" and the gradually building "Sons and Daughters" may be Meloy's best songs yet. It's good to hear the band expanding their horizons: They had begun to run the risk of niche-marketing to English majors and history buffs. Steve Klinge

All Music Guide

Colin Meloy and his brave Decemberists made the unlikely jump to a major label after 2005's excellent Picaresque, a move that surprised both longtime fans and detractors of the band. While it is difficult to imagine the suits at Capitol seeing dollar signs in the eyes of an accordion- and bouzouki-wielding, British folk-inspired collective from Portland, OR, that dresses in period Civil War outfits and has been known to cover Morrissey, it's hard to argue with what the Decemberists have wrought from their bounty. The Crane Wife is loosely based on a Japanese folk tale that concerns a crane, an arrow, a beautiful woman, and a whole lot of clandestine weaving. The record's spirited opener and namesake picks off almost exactly where Picaresque left off, building slowly off a simple folk melody before exploding into some serious Who power chords. This is the first indication that the band itself was ready to take the loosely ornate, reverb-heavy Decemberists sound to a new sonic level, or rather that producers Tucker Martine and Chris Walla were. On first listen, the tight, dry, and compressed production style sounds more like Queens of the Stone Age than Fairport Convention, but as The Crane Wife develops over its 60-plus minutes, a bigger picture appears. Meloy, who along with Destroyer's Dan Bejar has mastered the art of the North American English accent, has given himself over to early-'70s progressive rock with gleeful abandon, and while many of the tracks pale in comparison to those on Picaresque, the ones that succeed do so in the grandest of fashions. Fans of the group's Tain EP will find themselves drawn to "Island: Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel the Drowning" and "The Crane Wife, Pts. 1 & 2," both of which are well over ten minutes long and feature some truly inspired moments that echo everyone from the Waterboys and R.E.M. to Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, while those who embrace the band's poppier side will flock around the winsome "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)," which relies heavily on the breathy delivery of Seattle singer/songwriter and part-time Decemberist Laura Veirs. Some cuts, like the English murder ballad "Shankill Butchers" and "Summersong" (the latter eerily reminiscent of Edie Brickell's "What I Am"), sound like outtakes from previous records, but by the time the listener arrives at the Donovan-esque (in a good way) closer, "Sons & Daughters," the less tasty bits of The Crane Wife seem a wee bit sweeter. Reverend Lee Power