The Decemberists making a rock opera? No! Really? No!

By Matt Emery, written on Nov. 19, 2008

Colin Meloy, lead singer of The Decemberists, recently told Rolling Stone that the group’s forthcoming album will be — surprise! — very rock opera like.

Everyone’s going to call it a rock opera,” says the Decemberists’ frontman, Colin Meloy. “I’ve just got to come around to that.” Meloy is in the midst of mixing the band’s fifth album, Hazards of Love, at an Oregon City studio. It’s very different from the Decemberists’ 2006 major-label debut, The Crane Wife: Producer Tucker Martine is piecing together 16 or so segments into a continuous, hour-long narrative suite that riffs on folk-song archetypes. It’s a twisty, fantastical story about a woman named Margaret who is ravaged by a shape-shifting animal; her lover, William, who is desperate for the two of them to be reunited; a forest queen; and a villainous rake. “There’s a story there, but it’s really painted with broad strokes,” says Meloy.

At first, Hazards of Love was going to be an actual musical, staged by director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening). The story that Meloy came up with, however, was “practically unstageable,” the frontman says. (The pair are still hoping to work together, perhaps on something about a 1917 labor dispute in Montana.)

Hopefully the group’s schtick still has some gas in the engine. The Crane Wife was starting to draw things thin, and I’m worried about an entire narrative going through an album. But hey, why not make a musical into an album. It probably won’t suck.

But seriously, Colin, make this labor dispute Montana thing happen. Now. Because this is the kind of thing that happens in Montana: (He is missing fingers!!!)

Look for Hazards of Love sometime this spring.