Hazards of Love

Looking for a little musical intrigue in your life? Love the idea of one album telling an entire story, start to finish? Can't get enough of magical curses and queens of forests? Than I have the album for you!

The Decemberists new album, Hazards of Love, is all that and so much more. They recently played Bonnaroo where a member of my group got to see them perform the album live and it was, in his words, one of the best musical moments of his life. Being as he's had some pretty awesome musical moments I decided maybe I'd better check this thing out. And have been doing nothing but listening to it, non-stop, any moment I can for the past two weeks.

The quick and dirty version is a young maiden falls in love with an enchanted man (Fawn by day/Man by night) whose mother happens to be the pretty all demanding queen of the forest. Mom obviously doesn't want son to run away with this woman so she sends The Rake to kidnap her (and pretty brutally attack her from what it sounds like). Enchanted man goes after his true love anyway, saves her, and then the two of them die together in a raging river. It's pretty damn awesome. There is a great song by song explanation (much wordier and more cleverly written than my own quick synopsis) located here. Which to be honest really helped me understand the whole thing, just scroll down a bit and the explanation starts.

And if you find you love this as much as me, and you have some free time and money (and you live in or near Chicago), they are coming to town. They are scheduled for a Friday night gig at Lollapalooza, which for $80 you can get a Friday day pass and check them out. I contemplated this and almost did it but then discovered, like many of the bands, they are playing a Thursday night gig at The Metro for much cheaper ($35). Of course I got my ticket as soon as they went on sale.