Release Date: January 18Label: Capitol Records
Colin Meloy and his merry band of indie-rock troubadours have spent the past five years thinking big. After the breakthrough success of 2005's still-excellent Picaresque, Meloy seemed to think that what people wanted were epic songs, full of heavily described characters and convoluted narratives worthy of Russian literature. The following albums, The Crane Wife and The Hazards Of Love, ended up missing the mark somewhat, as Meloy's sharp songwriting skills got consumed by ambition. So, The King Is Dead is a shift away from all that pomp, as the band mines heavily from R.E.M. and the more twangy end of Neil Young's career to create simpler, country-inflected tunes. This shift would be admirable if not for the fact that Meloy swings the pendulum ridiculously far, robbing his songs of what made them interesting in the first place. The King Is Dead is a lifeless, trite and altogether boring trawl through the lazier elements of American music, sewing together an endless stream of lyrics about seasons and "ancient riverbeds" with dull, major chords. There are no five-part operas about fawns, for which I am thankful. But there's also aren't any interesting songs. That's a rough trade-off.
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