I just made my first contribution to the Aught Music blog, discussing the song "July, July!" by the Decemberists. Please check out the blog as a whole, but here's the link to my piece, in conjunction with a look at "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade" by Rich Thomas.
I'm never one to pat myself on the back, but I feel that I made a decent point in summarizing the appeal (or lack thereof) of the Decemberists' music:
"However, their style is such that there is usually no happy medium. It's just as easy to enjoy their take on Victorian times, sea shanties, and Dickensian low-lives as it is to loathe such a niche."
The beauty in Colin Meloy's songwriting, and the maturation of the Decemberists as a complete unit is that they very well could have been a "one and done" band, since their music had the potential to regress into satire or, even worse, repetitiveness. This growth is best exemplified by their recent album, The Hazards of Love. Not only is this their best album to date, it's arguably one of the best albums of 2009. I look forward to seeing them live in about three weeks, and I plan to review the show as a submission to Treble Zine. Stay tuned.
Since the Aught Music blog is a collective, I don't plan on devoting singular posts on Chicago Ex-Patriate whenever one of my contributions is published; to me, that would go against the whole spirit of a long-running collective project. So from now on, I'll just post a brief update on the right-hand column whenever I have a write-up posted there.
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