Aiming for playful rebirth, the Decemberists instead land on cloying kitsch with I’ll Be Your Girl.
The Decemberists’ new album, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, is built on a series of wild stylistic vacillations.
To the Decemberists’s credit, they’re committed to the idea of challenging themselves.
Textbook blog-hype band: first album praised beyond (but only a little beyond) its merits, automatically slammed by same for their follow-up.
Hazards of Love personifies potentially workable songs eaten away by overwhelmingly ill-conceived ambition.
It’s too inconsistent to be declared the masterpiece of which Colin Meloy and company are capable.