I’ll Be Your Girl comes a year after Queen of Hearts, a side project English folk song album with Olivia Chaney, and three years after The Decemberists’ seventh album, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, whose opener claimed the band was changing, but whose track list mostly said otherwise.
Today’s release is a true departure for the band, probably immediately their most unique amongst their discography, with most of the songs featuring synths and sounds absent from the previous seven albums.
The album is certainly a product of its time. The first single, is certainly at least tangentially related to the president, as it adopts one of his selling points: that the world is in trouble and he’s the only person who can do anything about it. “I alone am the answer / I alone will make wrongs right,” the song’s second verse begins. Elsewhere, we’ve got songs with titles like “Everything Is Awful” and “We All Die Young.”
The album was produced by John Congleton, who has previously worked produced albums by Angel Olsen, The Mountain Goats, St. Vincent, Cloud Nothings, Okkervil River, and The Walkmen. The band’s extensive tour in support of I’ll Be Your Girl will bring them to Philly’s Mann Center on June 7 and Red Bank’s Count Basie Theatre on June 12.
Other albums in stores today that we’re listening to:
Mount Eerie – Now Only
Oak Ridge Boys – 17th Avenue Revival
Stone Temple Pilots – Stone Temple Pilots
Yo La Tengo – There’s a Riot Going On
Header photo courtesy of Festivalsherpa.com.