Best Albums of the 2000s: #17

17. The Decemberists - Picaresque (2005)

"And I am a writer, a writer of fictions..."

Being a music lover is like eating at Taco Bell, only without the intestinal hazards. You can be happily eating your five-layer burrito and suddenly realize, "Hey, this is really similar to the Taco Supreme I had yesterday, and the Gordita Cagarse I had the day before..." And then you look at the menu and realize that everything is made of the same shit rolled a different way. You get the same feeling when you realize that most music is just a Mad Lib that says "I feel _______," usually with love or hate filling in the blank. Suddenly every love song you hear is a Gordita Crunch and every fuck-you song is a Macho Burrito and you're shitting in your pants, wishing there was a better way.

When I start feeling this way, you know what helps? A nine-minute song about a man who avenges his mother's death by following her killer around the world and finally murdering him while they both starve in the belly of a giant whale. You definitely don't get that shit at Taco Bell. You can't even get that at Del Taco, and they even have cheeseburgers. The only place to go for that is The Decemberists, and with that I'm probably going to drop this food metaphor because I no longer understand it.

Picaresque, according to wikipedia, means "a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class." That's a better description that I could give for this album's collection of strange characters and wildly original songs. It almost feels more like a collection of short stories than an album. For example, check out "The Bagman's Gambit," a story of espionage and forbidden love in Cold War-era Washington that eventually descends into a mess of discordant strings that recalls a shadowy take on The Beatles' "A Day In The Life."

Skip ahead a few tracks and you're in a whole other world. "On The Bus Mall" is a gorgeous rain-swept ballad about two young lovers who run away only to find themselves drawn into the world of prostitution to stay alive. The lyrics avoid being overly sentimental by focusing on the emotions of its protagonists, trying to stay strong in the face of incredible adversity. It's a feeling anyone can relate to, even those of us who have managed to avoid selling our bodies for money so far. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the song is hauntingly beautiful, with a melody that draws us in even as the story it supports becomes bleaker with every line.

The album only steps away from its storytelling formula once, for the spirited and downright poppy "16 Military Wives." While most of the album's songs take place at some point in the past, this one plants its feet firmly in the present (or, you know, 2005) by taking on the Iraq war, primarily the asleep-at-the-wheel media that allowed it to happen. The song makes its points without becoming preachy or dating itself with specifics. Its story of cannibal kings, doomed company men and grieving widows could apply to any previous war and any of the ones still to come. The band does this while framing the song with their most effortlessly catchy tune yet.

And then there's "The Mariner's Revenge Song," the epic tale of adventure, betrayal, revenge and being eaten alive by giant whales. Singer Colin Melloy tells the story over almost nine minutes of sea shanty, punctuated by Rachel Blumberg's haunted choruses, where her ghostly voice urges our hero on in his quest for revenge. Also, when the band performs this live, they sometimes use giant cardboard cut-outs of ships and whales, so there's that too.

What makes Picaresque a great album instead of merely a collection of great songs, is the way common themes wind their way through stories that may seem a world apart. The most prominent theme here is "expectations vs. reality." The injured high school football star of "The Sporting Life" watches his future fade before his eyes in much the same way as those naive teenage runaways did. The star-crossed lovers of "We Both Go Down Together" end up jumping from the cliffs of Dover in a possibly-mutual suicide, and it echoes the doomed romance between spies and government workers in "The Bagman's Gambit." Without these threads, the album could feel directionless, but it all ties together as a coherent whole, even as the songs refuse to stay in one place for too long.

Picaresque isn't a "background music" kind of album. It rewards close attention, and investing in the stories and characters can really pay off. Spend too much time with it and other music can start to sound unoriginal and uninspired. Why listen to yet another "why won't that person come back?" song when you can come to this world of victorian ghosts, disgraced football heroes and street urchins, where you literally have no idea where the next song might take you? It's like walking out of a Taco Bell and discovering that there's a whole world out there.