Year: 2005
Genre: Indie Rock

Tracks:

01. The Infanta
02. We Both Go Down Together
03. Eli The Barrowboy
04. The Sporting Life
05. The Bagman's Gambit
06. From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)
07. 16 Military Wives
08. The Engine Driver
09. On the Bus Mall
10. The Mariner's Revenge Song
11. Of Angels and Angles

Review:

Even though it's only March, it's hard to imagine any release this year surpassing, or even matching, the 1-2-3 punch of Picaresque's opening three songs. Beginning with the distinct whelp of a wolf cub, 'The Infanta' explodes into an impressive assault of drums and guitars that's soon joined by the nasally voice of singer Colin Meloy as he intones:

Here she comes in her palanquin on the back of an elephant,
on a bed made of linen and sequins and silk.

And a verse later:

Among five-score pachyderm, each canopied and passengered,
sit the duke and the duchess's luscious young girls.

The literate lyrics (I had to consult the dictionary a few times) and urgent music combine to grab the listener and pull him along by the earlobes through the rest of "The Infanta" and into the beautiful "We Both Go Down Together", one of Picaresque's stand out tracks. A potentially clichéd tale of love set in Britain's class structure, Meloy imbues it with terse lyrics and his signature Gothic gloom.

I found you a tattooed tramp,
a dirty daughter from the labor-camps.
I laid you down in the grass of a clearing.
You wept, but your soul was willing.

But as uncertain as the reference to rape is in "We Both Go Down Together", the album becomes altogether more cryptic with "Eli The Barrowboy". The song Edgar Allen Poe never wrote, 'Eli The Barrowboy' is a sad ghost story about penance.

But, I am dead and gone and lying in a church ground.
Still I push my barrow all the day.
Still I push my barrow all the day.

Sadly, Picaresque takes a turn for the worse from here. "The Sporting Life" trades the Dickensian flavour of the past songs for a thumping beat somewhat reminiscent of Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life". Whatever value the lyrics possess, the transformation is jarring.