Driving back to Nashville from Lafayette, Indiana this weekend, I decided to revisit the Decemberists’ entire discography on the way down, to listen to each record and then to rank them in a hierarchy. The result was a list ordered as such:
- Picaresque (2005)
- Castaways and Cutouts (2002)
- The Hazards of Love (2009)
- The King is Dead (2011)
- The Crane Wife (2006)
- Her Majesty the Decemberists (2003)
- What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World (2015)
You may notice that their most recent release, What a Terrible World, is at the bottom. What you can’t see is how strikingly large the gap between albums six and seven actually is. Make no mistake — WATW is still a decent album by any standard. But it does stand as the Decemberists’ biggest disappointment, especially given the bands remarkable consistency and excellence. I want to reexamine What a Terrible World a year after its release, unpack its problems, and see if they can be fixed.