The new Decemberists CD, “The King Is Dead,” is being called a folk or Americana album. Even the band’s songwriter and frontman Colin Meloy described it as stripped back and simple.
o What: The Decemberists, in concert.
o When: 8 p.m. Feb. 19.
o Where: Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway, Portland.
o Cost: $40.40 through Ticketmaster, 800-745-3000 or http://ticketmaster.com.
o Information: http://pcpa.com
But one person that won’t talk about the CD quite in those terms is The Decemberists’ own guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, Chris Funk.
“I know that’s the way this album is being spun, but I don’t know if I totally agree with it, that it is totally stripped back,” Funk said. “Some of the songs, like ‘This is Why We Fight’ or ‘Calamity Song,’ those are pretty big pop numbers.”
The style and sound of “The King Is Dead” is a big topic of discussion, in part, because of where the CD sits within the context of the career of the Portland-based band.
o What: The Decemberists, in concert.
o When: 8 p.m. Feb. 19.
o Where: Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway, Portland.
o Cost: $40.40 through Ticketmaster, 800-745-3000 or http://ticketmaster.com.
o Information: http://pcpa.com
It comes after a pair of Decemberists’ albums that were among the most ambitious projects by any rock group. Their 2006 CD, “The Crane Wife,” featured a thematically linked three-song suite called “The Island” and a pair of songs, “The Crane Wife 3” and “The Crane Wife 1 & 2,” that shared a title and a story. This prompted many to erroneously consider it a concept album.
So Meloy and his bandmates decided to respond to that perception with a CD that was a true rock opera, “The Hazards of Love.” Its 17 songs formed a single, 55-minute, stylistically diverse piece of music.
Both “The Crane Wife” and “The Hazards of Love,” while they drew musically from a folk influence that has been part of The Decemberists’ sound since the group debuted in 2001, also included some of the hardest-rocking, most instrumentally ornate songs the band has recorded.
So the more acoustic and austere sound of “The Kings is Dead” represents a shift for The Decemberists.
If the music sounds live and spontaneous, and less complex, there’s a reason for that — “The King is Dead” was recorded in a barn converted into a studio in the countryside near Portland — but this is not a collection of fairly simple songs jammed out effortlessly by the group. In fact, nearly all of the songs were tracked individually by the band members: Meloy, Funk, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, bassist Nate Query and drummer John Moen.
The song “All Rise!” came together through jamming, Funk said. “But everything else was pretty constructed, to the point of maybe we shouldn’t have come to the barn. We should have just gone to a studio.
“It was actually pretty hard to get takes,” he said. “I feel like it was the hardest record we’ve ever made.”
Fortunately, the music on “The King is Dead” doesn’t sound labored or tense.
The sound is more acoustic and more spare, but that doesn’t mean “The King is Dead” lacks diversity, or for that matter, heft. “Don’t Carry It All” opens the album by bringing a considerable rhythmic thump to its rustic country sound. “Down by The Water” is also a pretty potent roots rocker.
But “Calamity Song,” with its brisk beat, finger-picked acoustic guitar lead and its ringing electric rhythm guitars, sounds like it could have fallen off of an early R.E.M. album. “Rox In The Box” settles into a loping gallop as its fiddles and accordion bring a hint of Celtic flair to the song.
“I think some of the sounds are obviously Americana, but there are also what I think are classic British sounds,” Funk said. “Like a lot of it I think is super R.E.M. And ‘This Is Why We Fight” sounds 100 percent like a Smiths song to me.”
The live set the band is playing in support of “The King is Dead” spans the group’s entire decadelong, six-album career, but Funk said the show doesn’t feel as demanding on the band or its audience as the “Hazards of Love” production.
“Doing the ‘Hazards of Love’ felt challenging to an audience, because there are some emotional parts and some slow parts,” Funk said. “So I think with (new) songs like ‘Calamity Song’ and ‘This is Why We Fight’ and ‘Don’t Carry It All,’ like those are really up-tempo, and to me more accessible songs for the general public, if you will. So I think it just kind of makes it more lighthearted and back to pre-‘Crane Wife,’ old school Decemberists live there. It’s been fun.”
