The Decemberists

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Utilizing words like "palanquin", "parapets", and "chaparral" may not necessarily indicate you're gay; it could just mean you're a creative writing major. In the case of Decemberists' main man Colin Meloy, only the latter is true, but Meloy has a penchant for a sort of overblown, fey ambiance, right down to his word choice. What's more, everything about the Decemberists recent release Picaresque screams "Theater!," "Costumes!" "Bring on the stage makeup!" and even the CD art itself plays on the stage-y theme, as the band members don various costumes, backed by intentionally amateurish, high-school-looking sets, acting out scenes from each song.

Meloy has always claimed to make music for the theater geeks, the wispy nerds, the non-jocks; in other words, for the boys in high school who are called "fags", even if they aren't. They're the ones who engender all the detriments of being queer and none of the benefits. The geeks, the fags, the spelling bee champs comprise an outsider culture, one that brings up the question: Does it really make a difference if you're hated for being gay or for majoring in creative writing, for being a math geek rather than a jock? By focusing on the lonely outsider, Picaresque touches on the connection between general isolation and the marginalized place of queer individuals. By couching that theme in theatrical imagery and an odd Victorian fixation, Picaresque proves downright faggy.

The disc kicks off with "The Infanta", a song that somehow remains tightly reined even as it sweeps and swoops cross the landscape, piano fills jangling and tinkling, guitars galloping like horses, as regal images parade by: "Here she comes in her palanquin/on the back of an elephant/on a bed made of linen and sequins and silk"-Uh, drama, much, Colin? The descriptions here are specifically referential (one pictures the scene taking place during the late 19th century, somewhere in a colonized desert land) and specifically overwrought. Some critics have called it "pretentious", but they may be missing the point. Pretension implies Meloy isn't aware his imagery is overdone, that he's taking himself so seriously he can't see the absurd in his lyrical foray into a desert world full of elephants and "pitchers of liquors and milks". There is seriousness here to be sure, but Meloy just might have his tongue planted in his cheek, creating a pop song that sounds more Gilbert and Sullivan than it does rock 'n roll.

Given Meloy's obsession with the Smiths (reportedly he can name every single Morrissey single and B-side by memory) it's no shocker the Decemberists seem to have taken Morrissey's fey legacy, his literary approach to lyrics, and expanded on it. After all, it's not just sexuality in and of itself Morrissey wrote about, but rather the outsider status, alienation, and plain old geekiness that queerness can engender. There are very few things more awkward, less sexy, and more alienating, for instance, than wearing a body cast for months, yet Morrissey wrote about such a situation in "Shoplifters of the World", and one could interpret the song as a claim that there's more to being queer than just getting booty at the disco. Meloy takes a similar lyrical approach but has the luxury of not being reined in by tight Johnny Marr guitar lines and British pop sensibilities, though he does seem guided by British Victorian sensibilities, and we all know how damn gay that era was.

Each song on Picaresque takes its time in building its own world, expanded and illuminated by pianos, violins, accordions, shifting tempos, and trumpet breaks. In typical Decemberists style, Meloy et. al fear neither geekiness nor fagginess, in the same way Morrissey (and, later, Belle and Sebastian) embraced such things. The results manifest in singular songs that send us into various narrative spaces like that of a Washington bureaucrat enamored with a spy, a village boy who pushes a wheelbarrow full of marigolds and who eventually drowns, and a sailor stuck in the belly of a whale. These are lonely people (is there any place more isolated than the stomach of a sea creature?). And as such, they follow Meloy's modus operandi of celebrating a culture of isolation.

A song central to this theme is "Sporting Life", a jaunty little tune that kicks off with a chunky drumbeat and jumps quickly into a 50s-era chord progression. The song structure itself is quite simple — ostensibly at least — it is a first-person tale of an ineffectual soccer player who has managed to ride the bench throughout the season, remaining anonymous and gloryless on the sidelines but also avoiding humiliation. At least until, his team leading by a hefty margin, the coach puts him in during the waning moments of the game.

He falls down, of course, as his girlfriend (now "arm in arm/with the captain of the other team"), his coach, and his father look on. "They condescend to fix on me a frown," Meloy says of his sneering observers, "how they love the sporting life!" By failing so miserably at a sport, the poor guy is ostracized, isolated, and immediately removed from the inner, insular world of people of the popular world. He's pushed outside the chalk boundary lines and he's not allowed back in. Meloy's character in the song stops just short of being called a fag, but the underlying theme is he's been emasculated — even losing his girlfriend — he's lost the approval of his butch father: "And father had such high hopes/For a son who would take the ropes/and fulfill all his old athletic aspirations/But apparently there's some complications".