Jealous exes can be such a drag — especially when they are forest queens.
Although The Decemberists are not strangers to weaving an intricate story line into their albums (The Crane Wife had tracks loosely based on Japanese folklore), most fans probably did not brace themselves for this. A “rock opera” by definition, The Hazards of Love is a 17-track minstrel show vocally typecast to perfection.
If you’ve heard only a track or two, don’t dismiss it just yet. As it turns out, judging Hazards by one track is like basing a movie review on one scene. Set aside an hour and decipher Colin Meloy’s inexplicable Portland accent from start to finish.
The narrator is William, the doting gentleman with a dark past, sung by Meloy. His sweet lover Margaret is sung by Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond. Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond takes on the role of the evil forest queen, the dead ex-lover of William with a vengeance.
The overall style of Hazards emphasizes the action instead of the music. Each song bleeds into another; many songs sound similar with folksy guitars, harpsichords and percussion. Climactic moments are marked by the crescendo of power chords and backbeats in the same way they are in most rock operas. There is at least one important riff that is repeated several times and molded instrumentally depending on the context.
We are introduced to our heroine by the narrator in track two, “The Hazards of Love 1,” after a palate-awakening prelude. The language would make most English majors happy: “You’ll learn soon enough / the prettiest whistles won’t wrestle the thistles undone.” The follow-up track borrows instrumentation from its predecessor and introduces Margaret’s joyous pregnancy. This is enough to send the forest queen into a rage. We’ll find out why later.
Margaret begins singing in track four, as she enters the taiga — Colin Meloy is not satisfied with calling it a forest. Her voice is light and Disney-like; she is reveling in her pregnancy and ready to go find her lover to tell him about it. It becomes obvious how removed this story is from the world we live in when “columbine” is sung in reference to a flower.
We meet the bitter forest queen in track six, “The Queen’s Approach,” on which she proclaims, “I’m / made of bones of the branches / the boughs and the brow-beating light / while my feet are the trunks / and my head is the canopy high.” Yes, she’s a tree. As weird as that seems, it’s no stranger to the form of a fairy tale, which this song more or less is — except for that whole happily ever after thing. Her voice is thicker, darker and more soulful in comparison to Margaret’s youthful, innocent singing.
“The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid” starts off with an ominous, minor variation on the main riff, performed by a single harpsichord. As William sings, the music builds up to flow into the queen’s loud, classic-rock sounding solo, when she proclaims in disgust, “This is how I am repaid.”
In “The Rake’s Song,” we find out what set the tree queen off. After we have already formed our opinions, the self-proclaimed “awful narrator” confesses how his unsatisfactory marriage with the queen left him with three little brats. After her death, he finished off the three children, wanting to start a new life. His newfound happiness crushes the queen, who is looking on from the forest.
The “Hazards of Love 3” is a creepy appeal from William’s dead children for revenge. We hear a group of children singing “Papa, turn the water down / The basin’s overflown,” set to haunting noises usually reserved for horror movies. Move over, Bright Eyes. The Decemberists not only put babies in bathtubs, but they make them sing, too.
The volume and tempo picks up as Margaret is abducted by the queen and thrown across the wild river. William is forced to set out and save her. The album ends with the lovely, poignant “The Hazards of Love 4.” The queen’s revenge is achieved: the two lovers wait to die on a sinking ship.
Unlike Coheed and Cambria, no graphic novel is needed to understand this book-on-tape set to music. There are no talking bikes in this one, just evil talking trees. Hazards of Love is certainly strange, but it’s also refreshing and timeless.
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