How do you follow up your first US No 1 album when your music typically goes against the commercial grain? With a little self-mockery about the weight of your fans' expectations and another cracking tune from your seemingly inexhaustible supply.
That's what we get with The Singer Addresses His Audience, the song that opens the Portland, Oregon band's seventh album. Agenda established, subsequent tracks have the creative license (and increased label budget) to branch out: an 80s brass-section pop riff here, a swooning 60s ooh-aah girl-band backing vocal there.
It's a nod to a new mainstream following, for sure, but Colin Meloy's songs are simply too good, too unpredictable, too apt to spin off into historical storytelling for accusations of sell-out to ring true; and, anyway, it's not long before the album settles solidly into The Decemberists' defined alt-folk-rock territory.
Meloy's voice remains a reedy instrument, but the production here gives it more depth of tone than before. No argument that they're now one of the best American bands around.
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