If the success of Vampire Weekend has proved anything, it’s that resembling junior librarians can still be cool. Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy clearly knows a thing or two about books, so stuffed are his songs with references to lusty maidens, lonesome vagabonds, avenging mariners and doleful street urchins – you don’t get this kind of thing with The Feeling or (sweet mercy) Scouting For Girls. Meloy, captured here on a tour of America, seems to inhabit a parallel universe where every lyric is a carefully-constructed rhyming couplet, every verse a Petrarchan sonnet. Whereas clever dicks like Foals turn condescension into an art form, Meloy is never less than engaging, filling his plague songs and deck-swabbing sea shanties with real heart and humour. He might be smart, but he’s not a smartass. Ross Thompson.
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DOWNLOAD: ‘THE ENGINE DRIVER’, ‘BANDIT QUEEN’.
FOR FANS OF: MORRISSEY, NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL, ROBYN HITCHCOCK.
Posted on: April 18, 2008
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