Anyway, I really wanted to post about the Decemberists new album, the Hazards of Love. It is amazing, quite simply. The story is fantastic, it's completely blown my mind. Like most, if not all, of the Decemberists album, it's a concept album; a macabre fairy tale of the best kind.
It's about a girl, Margaret, who finds a wounded fawn while wandering in the woods. She tends its wounds, and at sundown discovers that the fawn becomes a young man named William. They make love, for lack of a better term, in the forest and separate. Margaret returns to the forest after discovering that she is pregnant and sings about how she still won't "want for love" despite her condition. They meet and make love again, only to be discovered by William's adoptive mother, the Forest Queen. Her main song, "The Queen's Rebuke" is fantastic; the entire album has a harder rock feel, while maintaining songs like "Isn't it a Lovely Night?" in the classic Decemberists sound. The Queen, angry that the boy she saved would be so ungrateful and fall in love, she hires a Rake (a bad man, not the gardening tool) to capture Margaret. His song, cleverly called "the Rake's Song", explains how the Rake came to his interesting place in life and how he doesn't regret it.
After growing bored with his marriage and hating his children, the Rake's wife dies in childbirth with their fourth child. The Rake proceeds to poison his daughter Charlotte with foxglove, drown his daughter Dawn, and burn his son to death. William goes to rescue his love, hidden across the Annan Waters, despite being told by the Queen that he'll die if he attempts to cross. He prays to the river spirits in the song "Annan Water" to calm and allow him to cross, on the condition that they can drown him on his way back. In quite possibly one of the creepiest songs I've ever heard, the Rake's children literally come back to haunt him in "the Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)". William rescues Margaret, and then kisses her as the Annan Waters overtake them.
not very cheerful, but brilliant none the less.
On a totally different note, I'd like to recommend the British comedy, the Boat that Rocked. It's hilariously fantastic, and everyone should go see it. Directed by Richard Curtis (of Love Actually fame), it's got everything you could want in a movie, plus an extraordinarily kick-ass soundtrack. Love it.
picture credit: fawn, from pmsswim on flickr. poster, Here's the Story blog.
