by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Sometimes ambience is everything. When singer Colin Meloy moved from Helena, Montana to Portland, Oregon, he fell in love with the ocean. Living an hour from the coast, he would often drive out, check into a cheap motel, eat clam chowder and drink in the salty sea air, experiences that inspired his “fascination with things maritime.” Hence the nautical narrative of the Decemberists’ debut album, Castaways and Cut-Outs, a theme that wove its way into Her Majesty and the band’s latest LP, Picaresque, their most accomplished disc to date, thanks partly to the setting of its recording: a former Baptist church.

“It’s owned by this guy who rents it out to lefty political organizations, and somehow we fit in there,” says Meloy, whose band is named after a 19th-century Russian revolutionary group. “It was an experiment to try and remove any vestige of the studio in the hope that it would allow everybody to relax. Her Majesty was a little stymied by the clinical studio setting.”

Engineer Chris Walla (of Death Cab for Cutie) miked the church to capture its unique acoustics and cull a “big room sound,” bolstering the Decemberists’ orchestral manoeuvres.

Between the chamber pop arrangements, the fairy tale quality of the lyrics and the theatricality of the songs and imagery—Picaresque’s booklet depicts the band members in an imaginary stage play—it’s no surprise that Meloy is itching to get involved in musical theatre, a dream that nearly came to fruition with a Peter Pan production that unfortunately fizzled out in its early stages.

Although Meloy channels some of his love for musical theatre into the Decemberists with songs such as “The Mariner’s Revenge Song,” set inside the belly of a whale, he still hopes to try his hand at the real thing some day.

“But there’s such treacly schmaltz being written. The arrangements of modern Broadway musicals sound like the worst pap from 1984, those big synth patches,” he says, reeling at the thought of trying to resuscitate the sagging genre. “It’s very daunting, but I’d love to do it.”

With Cass McCombs at Club Soda on
Wednesday, Oct. 12, 9 p.m., $20

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