Life, Death And The Decemberists

Death, Billy Joel and angelic visitations are just three of the ingredients that shaped The Decemberists' latest album As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again. Vocalist Colin Meloy talks to Prog about creativity as a form of hallucination, sneaking progressive music into the record collections of unsuspecting listeners, and why you have to earn the long songs.

- David West

"Each time we finish a record I feel like, ‘Wow, that’s it, that’s all the gas in the chamber,’” says The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy.

The Portland, Oregon quintet released I’ll Be Your Girl in 2018, then six years slipped by before the arrival of their superb ninth album As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again. Meloy has hardly been slothful, though, writing children’s books and composing music for stage and screen.

“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always needed to create something,” he says. “Even if I was living in solitude, an anonymous, unknown person, I would still be making shit. I would be writing songs, writing stories. I think that’s something I’m just built to do.”

Despite that incessant creative itch that needs scratching, Meloy never knows when the material for another Decemberists album will appear. It’s not something that can be forced.

“It really has to be when inspiration strikes,” he says. “I feel like I have as much control over us making new records as anybody does. I’m also waiting for a new Decemberists record all the time and wondering when it will come out. I don’t know if that is particularly romantic or sexy. After a record is out, there’s this sort of void, then that void slowly gets filled because I’m compulsively creating.”

As It Ever Was… reunites the band with producer Tucker Martine, a frequent collaborator on albums including 2009’s The Hazards Of Love and 2015’s What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World. The result is a departure from the synth-heavy I’ll Be Your Girl produced by John Congleton, who has worked with David Byrne, Lana Del Rey and Sigur Rós.

“We worked with John not because we didn’t get along with Tucker – kind of the opposite,” says Meloy. “I felt like we had gotten to a position where maybe we were too comfortable, and that patterns and habits were emerging that we couldn’t quite break from.”