Woove staff writer Peter Tesh reviews the most recent album from The Decemberists.

Imagine, for a moment that Indie Rock and Southern Folk met up somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line and had a bastard son with a heart of gold. Raised up north with his mother's family, he ran away from home at a young age with nothing but the clothes on his back and a harmonica, down the Mississippi and over towards Appalachia, to seek his fortune and find the father he never knew.

That son, if you've kept up with the metaphor, would be The King Is Dead (2011), the surprising new offering from the Midwestern group, The Decemberists. It's a big change from the folk-epic Hazards of Love (2009), more reminiscent of the easygoing tracks from The Crane Wife (2006) or Picaresque (2005), drawing elements of bluegrass and old-fashioned southern folk to create a sound  close to, but still entirely unlike anything they've ever written before.

"Don't Carry it All," “Calamity Song,” and "Down by the Water,” have gotten the most reviewer attention. You'll often hear them described as “heavily inspired by R.E.M.”  This is incredibly unsurprising, considering that Colin Meloy, the band's frontman, has repeatedly called R.E.M. one of his major influences, and if you had shown me "Calamity Song" before telling me who did it, I would have sworn it was an R.E.M cover. Of course, these three also feature R.E.M.'s guitarist Peter Buck, so that could have something to do with it. Joking aside, all are solid tracks, with "Don't Carry It All" probably the strongest of the three, as it most successfully combines Buck's influence with The Decemberists' own trademark style of blending old folk music with the contemporary styles of indie rock.

“January Hymn” and “June Hymn,” may be the real gems of this album, though. Both driven by simple acoustic guitar and Colin Meloy's quiet vocals, they tell two very different stories— “January Hymn” looking back at a happier time, and "June" looking to the future—but the two are united by a strangely compelling melancholy that pulls you in from the first time you listen.

The album is not without its faults, of course. Fans of their more dramatic style from The Hazards of Love will of course be disappointed, as the most intense songs on The King are nowhere near its level, and it seems to lack an overarching narrative, although the individual tracks, as always, have their own little stories to tell. And, well, if you absolutely can't stand the fiddle or the twang of the steel guitar then you're in for a disappointment—and it seems like they discovered the harmonica for the first time before recording this album, as it is featured slightly more often than it should be (which is rarely ever.) But overall, this is one of the better albums The Decemberists have put out to date, up at the level of Picaresque or The Crane Wife in terms of craftsmanship. If you don't like folk music, then, well, you shouldn't have looked into The Decemberists in the first place, but if you have any love for all the different traditions that went into this album, then you should find it as wonderful as I did.