THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “For over 20 years, The Decemberists have been one of the most original, daring, and thrilling U.S. rock bands. Their distinctive brand of hyperliterate folk-rock set them apart from the start, releasing nine ambitious albums unbound by genre. Now the beloved indie band are back with their first album in six years, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again — not only the longest Decemberists album to date (and their first intentional, proper double-LP) but also their most empathetic and accessible, its 13 songs like semaphores of mutual recognition for our fraught times and faint hope
Reuniting with producer Tucker Martine (R.E.M., Neko Case, Sufjan Stevens) who began working with the band on The Crane Wife, the album features R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, The Shins’ James Mercer and Lizzie Ellison on background vocals.
This, songwriter Colin Meloy will tell you proudly, is the best Decemberists album and perhaps the ultimate realization of 22 years of work. In many ways, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again feels like an aptly titled renewal for The Decemberists. The first full-length release on the band’s own label, after a run of nearly two decades with Capitol. As they were once, here are the Decemberists again, now an independent band empowered by singing stories that sound instantly familiar and convey some bit of hard-won wisdom.
The existential slog and capitalist vexation of The Reapers, the opiated delusion and jumbled jingoism of America Made Me, the guileless tenderness and absolute surrender of All I Want Is You: As It Ever Was is the redemptive testament of a band finding new communal hymns by revisiting several old modes at once. As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again rings with the urgency and ardor of right now, maybe more than ever before.”
