Music Review: The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

With so much literary focus (as a whole) being turned to The Decemberists, their latest release and major label debut, The Crane Wife, has musicality that exceeds expectation and rebels against such a limited interpretation. Leader Colin Meloy employs his masterful work of historical artistry that is, at it’s best, literature about war and death (and thus, any notion of straight storytelling antics is gone). And it is the combination of flawlessly constructed music with striking lyrics that declares that this group is not to be missed. Each element works to create - it’s an artist's dream.

And the Decemberist is... well let’s bring this into perspective, because it sets the stage for understanding great stories told with great lyrics. December 14, 1825, a revolt on Imperial Russia was attempted by army officers that led about three thousand Russians into battle. They were opposed to the Czar, and thus, pioneers of every revolution since. They cast the mold. Because these events occurred in December, the rebels were called the Decembrists. To take on the name Decemberist was a very honorable undertaking.

The album itself borrows the title from an Asian fable/proverb about a man who finds an injured crane in the forest and nurses it back to health so it can fly away by itself. After a couple days, a woman shows up at the house where love and marriage soon ensues. The husband and wife are very poor, so the wife suggests that the husband sell a very particular cloth that she weaves. There is one condition: that he not look at her in the special room while she is making the particular cloth. After so long, the husband’s curiosity peaks and he looks into the room just to discover his wife plucking out her own feathers to intertwine them into the fabric. The wife sees her husband watching, and she flies into the blue never to return. The two songs that follow this storyline are “The Crane Wife 1 & 2” and “The Crane Wife 3.”

Article Author: SethMatic

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