Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am far from the king of new music. My tastes were decided early, and have hardly altered at all in the intervening years. It is not so much that I am attracted to any given genre, so much as I look for a few key elements: interesting melody, clever arrangements, a certain melancholic turn, and a healthy dose of passion.

Needless to say, most pop music these days, constructed as it is with ProTools and other studio wizardry, does not suffer from a surplus of passion.  Melancholy is also well out of favour, (although with a depression looming, it may come back into style). Nonetheless, the odd tune does come along that manages to capture my imagination.

The Decemberists come from the fertile Portland, Oregon scene, which has fostered thousands of quirky artists. Unlike their more punk rock oriented brethren, the Decemberists are not afraid of acoustic instruments like the accordion and bouzouki. They would have peaked my interest on that basis alone, but they have other attractions as well. Their songs often tell little stories, drawn from history and American culture, and are impressive in their many literary and other clever devices. Even more interesting to me, somehow they have allowed themselves to be influenced by folk music without becoming part of some faux country Americana thing. One of the great challenges of Great Big Sea has been to keep our music well grounded in traditional Newfoundland music, while at the same time avoiding the ‘Celtic’, ‘Country’, ‘Roots’, etc., labels the music business has been so eager to apply to us. Making folk music interesting is a challenge, but too many bands, (in my less than humble opinion), just slavishly imitate the best of some genre or another, and never really come to grips with integrating it into their own lives. We are not Irish, and therefore would feel ridiculous pretending to be ‘Celts’. Yet every day we see bands who have decided that they are now from the backwoods of Tennessee or wherever, and go charging in accordingly. The Decemberists are plainly doing their own thing, (whatever that is), and I admire them for it.

Check out ‘Yankee Bayonets’, from The Crane Wife album. Lead singer Colin Meloy duets with another Portland singer, Laura Veir, in a song that evokes old time American music, 1960s San Francisco hippiedom, civil war ballads and God knows what else. And does it all perfectly.

In the interests of full disclosure, the Halifax, Nova Scotia band Wintersleep has a relationship with GBS’s management office. That alone would probably not have peaked my interest, had I not stumbled across the song ‘Weighty Ghost’. The song is deceptively simple, a brief story about the sort of displacement one feels in the morning after the night before, when a glance in the mirror can provoke all sorts of uncomfortable questions. The songs is a small moment of brilliance, built around a one finger keyboard line that even I could manage, with a 70s style stomp groove, and the sort of chorus that used to come so easily to Paul Simon. Highly recommended.

This last song isn’t exactly new, but in the interest of prolonging adolescence as long as possible, it is highly recommended. At this stage of my life, there are not many songs that make me feel I am missing out on anything. Having spent half my life as some sort of quasi-rock star, I have probably had way more of my share of fun anyway. That said something about this song makes me want to run away to New York, move in with some Cuban guys on the Lower East Side, and stay up all night drinking Sangria and writing an absurdist opera. Download ‘***’ by the Brazilian Girls, and see if you don’t want to run away and join the circus.