Album review: Decemberists - What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World

Album review

If you’re the Decemberists, how do you set about winning over new fans in 2015? On the go for 15 years now, the Portland band (and they’re among the Portlandiest of Oregon groups) the five piece have just released their seventh album, ponderously titled What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World.

Having scaled the indie-rock heights on The Crane Wife in the mid-Noughties, Colin Meloy et al have been trying their hand at various haphazard genres since. There was the indulgent Hazards of Love, initially planned as one long, twisting song (yes, there are plenty of prog notes present), and then the medieval folk-inspired The King Is Dead.