Yes, I am.
It's been a long three weeks. I usually deal pretty well with the whole seasonal depression, thing, but the last three weeks have been pretty tough. A lot of losing all ambition, drinking, and then forcing myself into spurt of creativity and, ugh, productivity. It's wearing. Maybe I should just get a suit, like the bearded guy on the Mens Warehouse adds told me; suits are proven, by scientists, to increase productivity. Or something. But who needs a suit when you can just wait painful weeks to hear an album that lifts you out of the funk.
This time that album is the Decemberists' Picaresque.
The difficult thing to grasp with the Decemberists for me was always how Colin Meloy, the bespectacled lead man of the group, is quoted extensively talking about his influences: The Smiths (and especially Morrisey), the Waterboys and Robyn Hitchcock. The guy even wrote a 33-1/3 book about the Replacements' Let It Be. These artists don't exactly add up to the Decemberists.
But I think it comes through on this album. Meloys written an album that captures the spirits of those artists greatest albums, many of which got me out of deep funks in their own time in my life. It's that whole darkness delivered over pop thing. The "sugar coated pill." That's a phrase that always struck me as odd, paired with the "get use to it -ism" of "swallow that pill." Or maybe I made those sayings up. But it fits with this album. There's something about shaking your ass to a song that skewers American political thought like "16 Military Wives" does.
Not that it's a new thing; but it's always a sign of a great album.
