ENTERTAINMENT

'The Two Thrones'-a real prince of a game
'Lucky Number Slevin' a sure thing in entertainment

Decemberists' new album 'The Crane Wife' wins under Capitol Records

By Moses Whitaker
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Staff Writer

- Music Review -

The Decemberists' newly released album titled "The Crane Wife" will definitely not disappoint any old fans and is accessible enough to energize new ones.

The Decemberists have already built a pretty stable career without having a label. "The Crane Wife" is the band's first release under a label, and fans feared that the change would dilute the band's sound and quite possibly make the album a flop.�

While "The Crane Wife" might not be their best album, it might be the most impressive album to come out so far this year.�The Decemberists brought in fellow band Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla to produce on the album.�

What makes this album so impressive is that it is the harbinger of a new genre called indie-prog.�Essentially, indie music is reminiscent of much older music in which the songs can carry themselves for more than ten minutes and still be enjoyable.�The best example of this is a song titled "The Island" which clocks in at about 12.5 minutes.�

A telltale sign of prog in music would be a keyboard solo amped up higher than the guitars.�It would be easy to make a Led Zepplin comparison, but it would also be misleading.

From start to finish this album is lush with sound and texture.�The lead singer, Colin Meloy, uses interesting wordplay in his lyrics.�Every song on the album is a story, which in part makes it folk music as well.�

The only really weak points on the album are the simpler acoustic songs, but the album easily picks up its slack.� While the acoustic songs are weaker, they are also more than tolerable.�

The Decemberists' first album under Capitol Records sounds just like a Decemberists album would otherwise, but the sound quality is better.�