The Decemberists: Picaresque (2LP) [KILL ROCK STARS]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set spreads the album over three sides and adds the Picaresqueties outtakes on the fourth. Picaresque scored 81 on Metacritic, and Pitchfork later placed it at No. 143 on its list of the top 200 albums of the 2000s.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Picaresqueties outtakes on side D

About the album

Most bands write songs about themselves. Colin Meloy wrote his about infantas, bagmen, bandit queens and a sailor swallowed by a whale, which is roughly what the word picaresque promises: roguish heroes living on their wits. In the summer of 2004 the Portland band rented the Prescott Church in northeast Portland for a month and set about making their most theatrical record yet.

Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla produced, and the band kept ideas flowing by filling a used bike helmet with slips of paper listing strategies to try. Accordion and hurdy-gurdy sit beside the guitars, with Petra Haden on violin and a small brass section. "The Infanta" opens in full pageant mode, "We Both Go Down Together" is a doomed romance with strings, "16 Military Wives" is a brassy singalong, and the epic "Mariner's Revenge Song" plays like a sea shanty with a plot twist.

Mad Men later opened an episode with "The Infanta," which suits a band that always sounded slightly out of its century. We tried the bike-helmet method on the staff schedule once; it mostly suggested more accordion.

Also at Kops: more The Decemberists on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Kill Rock Stars (cat# KRS 425), a reissue of the 2005 album.