While browsing various year-end best lists, I kept finding an album called Her Majesty The Decemberists by The Decemberists. A search of the iTunes Music Store yielded said album, and a casual listen of the sample clips was promising, so I downloaded it. But I didn't listen to it.

Last night as I set up my new G5 (about which, more — much more — in the future), I chose to listen to the Decemberists on a whim.

My god! Here is music so perfect it made me cry.

I'll admit that I'm not fond of every song on the album, but those that are good are very very good.

Los Angeles, I'm Yours
by The Decemberists

There is a city by the sea
A gentle company
I don’t suppose you’d want to?

And as it tells its sorry tale
In harrowing detail
Its hollowness will haunt you

Its streets and boulevards,
Orphans and oligarchs
And here’s a plaintive melody
A truncated symphony.
An ocean’s garbled vomit on the shore:
Los Angeles, I’m yours.

O ladies, pleasant and demure
Sallow cheek’d and sure
(I can see your undies)

And all the boys you drag about
An empty, fallow fount
From Saturdays to Mondays

You hill and valley crowd
Hanging your trousers down at heel.
This is the realest thing
As ancient choirs sing
A dozen blushing cherubs wheel above:
Los Angeles, my love.

O what a rush of ripe élan!
Langour on divans
Dalliant and dainty!

But oh the smell of burnt cocaine,
The dolor and the decay
It only makes me cranky.

O great calamity
Ditch of iniquity and tears,
How I abhor this place!
Its sweet and bitter taste
Has left me wretched, retching on all fours,
Los Angeles, I’m yours.

There is an entire class of music that I've dubbed Britfolk: Billy Bragg, Belle and Sebastian, early Everything But the Girl, early Aztec Camera, The Bluebells, etc. My initial reaction was to classify The Decemberists as Britfolk, too: simply, acoustic melodies accompanied by quirky, intelligent lyrics. A little research, though, revealed they're not a UK band at all. They're from Portland!

And they'll be playing an $8 show at Nocturnal (on east Burnside) a week from Friday.

(I love the band's links page. Among the "other assorted things we find particularly fetching": Orangina ("the official drink of The Decemberists"), This American Life, The Flashman Society, Tom Stoppard, Dylan Thomas, Vladmir Nabokov, and, of course, Patrick O'Brian.)

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — Mac Zealot   At this point, though, it seems likely that my Mac zealotry will yield its first fruit, that Jeff will join the cult.

2003 — Forgotten English   For a few months, the Mirons were saving their Forgotten English pages for me. At some point I decided to write a short story using these words (in chronological order based on the date each appeared in the calendar). I didn't get far.

2002 — My web sites are back!   My web sites are back! My web sites are back!

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