Decemberists

The Decemberists have announced the first leg of their 2011 North American tour in support of The King Is Dead, their forthcoming Capitol Records album which will be released January 18th. The single, "This Is Why We Fight" impacts Alternative on January 25th.

The King Is Dead marks a deliberate turn towards simplicity after the band's wildly ambitious and widely acclaimed 2009 song-cycle The Hazards of Love. Produced once again by Tucker Martine, the album features Welch on seven tracks and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck on three tracks. Rolling Stone has already called it "the most pastoral, rustic record they've ever made," while SPIN declared it "a bold, straight-up folk-rock record, perhaps their most accessible one yet." Time Magazine said, "The King Is Dead could mark their crossover to the realm of important American rock groups alongside the likes of Wilco and the White Stripes."

Frontman and primary songwriter Colin Meloy said that "doing this album took a lot out of me, and I'm definitely curious what will come out now that I've gotten it out of my system."

Meloy points out, that creating straightforward, unadorned songs can be at least as hard as building complicated musical epics. "For all my talk about how complex those records were, this one may have been harder to do," he says. "It's a real challenge to make simple music, and lot of times we had to deliberately hold off and keep more space. This record is an exercise in restraint."

The album was recorded in a converted barn at Pendarvis Farm, home of the annual Pickathon indie roots music festival, an 80-acre estate of lush meadows, forest, and Mt. Hood views outside of Portland. "We wanted that ethos," he says. "That was the color we wanted the record to have."

The country-rock sound of the 1970s was also behind the decision to bring in Americana luminary Gillian Welch, who sings on seven of the album's ten songs. "Some of my favorite country-rock records had that consistent pairing with a female voice, like Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris or Neil and Nicolette Larson on Comes a Time," says Meloy. "We thought it'd be great if there was a female foil to my singing and Gillian was sweet enough to come on board."

For all of the album's shift in musical direction, The King is Dead is still clearly a Decemberists album. "The syntax of The Decemberists is definitely still there," says Meloy. "I didn't want it to be too much of a departure. But where the nature motifs were more mystical on The Hazards of Love, the flora of this record are more of a pastoral backdrop."

To Colin Meloy, in some ways The King is Dead represents his own musical journey coming full circle. "Over the last eleven years or so, since I moved to Portland, I feel like I've been mining mostly English traditions for influence", he says. "I guess I've kind of come back to a lot of the more American music that got me going in the first place, R.E.M. and Camper Van Beethoven and all these bands that borrowed from more American traditions like Neil Young and the Byrds."

"Sometimes I kind of miss the epic-ness of the other albums, but it's nice to get all of the information across in three minutes. It's like going from reading a novel to reading a bunch of short stories."

The Decemberists consists of: Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query, and John Moen.

Upcoming Tour Dates:

• 01.25.11 - Beacon Theatre, New York, NY
• 01.28.11 - House of Blues, Boston, MA
• 01.29.11 - House of Blues, Boston, MA
• 01.31.11 - Olympia De Montreal, Montreal, Canada
• 02.01.11 - Sound Academy, Toronto, Canada
• 02.02.11 - Royal Oak Music Theatre, Royal Oak, MI
• 02.04.11 - Riviera Theatre, Chicago, IL
• 02.05.11 - Riverside Theatre, Milwaukee, WI
• 02.06.11 - State Theatre, Minneapolis, MN
• 02.07.11 - Uptown Theatre, Kansas City, MO
• 02.09.11 - Boulder Theater, Boulder, CO
• 02.10.11 - Ogden Theatre, Denver, CO
• 02.12.11 - The Wiltern, Los Angeles, CA
• 02.13.11 - House of Blues-San Diego, San Diego, CA
• 02.14.11 - Fox Theater, Oakland, CA
• 02.18.11 - Paramount Ballroom, Seattle, WA
• 02.19.11 - Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland, OR

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