Thanks to everyone who stopped by our table at SAC Fair today! If you’re lucky you may have picked up one of our SWEET MIX TAPES (if you’re extra lucky you got the one that Andre 3000 personally burned for you). In any case, we hope you enjoy it, and check out a complete track listing after the jump!
It’s tempting to compare The King is Dead with last year’s July Flame by Laura Veirs, who recorded a duet with the Decemberists on 2006’s The Crane Wife, and toured with them the following fall. The albums were released just within a year of each other, both were recorded in barns, and both are subtly gorgeous. They also represent a return to roots for both artists, with Veirs stepping down from the Chinese dragons and picaresque fantasies of “Saltbreakers” to extol the soft, cool taste of a summer peach or the career of beloved bassist, while the Decemberists leave the library for a road trip across sun-drenched fields of alt-country and folk. The difference is that, for the Decemberists, this means abandoning the whimsical, lit-geek tone that has defined their sound since “Leslie Anne Levine,” and the fact that they pull off this change in theme so effortlessly proves once and for all that there is, and always has been, far more to the band than the coy delights of their eighteenth century subject matter. Read More »
