I saw the Decemberists perform at last years Vegoose festival and was very much bowled over. Although they took a respectable third behind the amazing Arcade Fire and the even more amazing Spoon, they beat out bands such as the Shins, Beck, The Flaming Lips, DMB, Sleater Kinney the list is long. Of course this was my own best-of list, but I know all and my judgment should never be held to question. Their '05 masterwork Picaresque found the band on many a best-of list - a sprawlingly ambitous concept album that would make Pedro the Lion tremble - and in a few weeks they will better that effort with what I think is the best album of the year - The Crane Wife (based on the Chinese fable of the same name - I'm sure you all know it by heart.)

As the band themselves mention on their website, in the 70's the Crane Wife would have been a double. A little over an hour's worth of music awaits their fans on this major lable debut (Formerly of Kill Rock Stars and now with Capitol) an album more concerned with pop-songcraft than skewing pop songcraft. Which is all the more strange when you consider the fact that The Crane Wife would still fall under the general heading of prog. The second track "The Island is a 13 minute, four movement saga that certainly dofts it's beret to Papa Tull (as my friends and I referred to Jethro and Co, in high school). Track 6 is definitley influenced by Guided By Voices, whom I considered a prog-pop band and while I'm on the subject Colin Meloy's singing voice is definitely comparable to Robert Pollard's unconventional frontman larynx-work - it also bears a similarity to Conor Oberst's bleating approach, all of which is pretty much a compliment.

The main gist of the songs here are something of a cross between twelve-string Rick REM (ca. Reckoning) crossed with mid-career Genesis (Trick of the Tail thru And Then There Were Three) featuring instantly sing-alongable songs that settle into gorgeously memorable folkish Choruses. Track 5 is the real non sequitir - an up-tempo keyboard-driven ditty that sounds remarkably like The Talking Heads "Life In Wartime." The title track, tells the Oriental fable of "the Crane Wife" with it's many morals and twists, bookending the record with a 10 plus minute opus played out in three movements that most definitely sounds like it could have been lifted from Genesis' Wind and Wuthering.

I'm going to use this review to bemoan the biggest drag about the digital download age. It seems like someone would start a website called linernotes.com, because when you download an album you rarely get the lyrics with it, and on an album by a lyricist as ingenius as Meloy that's a particular shame. If I had time I'd start linernotes.com myself, so there you go you young upstart millionaires - I'll be your first visitor. Meanwhile I'll just have to suss out what the hell Meloy is going on about. But mark my words, even on the strength of the music and what I've managed to piece together, this is the year's best so far (I'm hearing amazing things about Joseph Arthur's latest and have heard one song on satellite to support the praise.)