The First Day Of Winter

“I definitely wanted it to be economical,” Colin Meloy says of his band’s new LP, The King Is Dead.

“One of the concepts on this record was, ‘Let’s keep it short! ‘Let’s keep a whole record short! Let’s keep the songs short! If there’s any phrase or measure that really doesn’t absolutely need to be there, let’s feel okay to lose it.’”
A retro country vibe has usurped The Decemberists’ progressive sound in recent months. Meloy says the band were happy to throw themselves in at the deep end – the album was recorded on an eight-acre farm outside Meloy’s hometown of Portland, Oregon.
“There’s a pretty great tradition of people going out to remote places and creating their own studio and then drawing on that environment,” he muses. “I romanticise about when The Waterboys did part of Fisherman’s Blues on the west coast of Ireland. I was 11-years-old and pouring over this record! I went over with my Mom in 1991 or 1992 and made a pilgrimage to Spiddal. I snuck into the ground to that estate where Fisherman’s Blues was recorded and got busted by the woman who owned it! She took pity on me as I was fumbling with my camera trying to get film in. I didn’t get a picture, but she gave me a tour around the house, which was pretty amazing!”
Meloy is one Statesider who doesn’t need to be prompted for kind words about our fair isles.
“I’ve been a Hibernophile from a really young age,” he gushes. “I fell in love with the music. I love the culture. I love the stories and the folk tales. It always seemed to be really interesting and exciting to me – discovering The Waterboys and discovering The Pogues and how punk music seemed to gel so well with Irish traditional music.”
If you happen to pick up on a distinct REM sway on The King Is Dead, it might have something to do with Peter Buck, who appears on three of its tracks.
“I always get to be the fawning fan whenever I hang out with him,” Meloy jokes, “and I think I mentioned to him that I was writing fake Peter Buck licks and I wanted to make him play them. He had a sense of humour about it and seemed sort of flattered!”
The collaboration pays off marvelously. Was there ever a point when Meloy felt he might be veering into copycat territory?
“All pop music is derivative,” he shrugs. “It’s a notoriously self-referencing art form. To me, it was an honest homage, as a lot of our records have been in various different distinct ways – maybe just more obvious because it’s a more recent vintage.”
But having your hero agree to throw it down on your album is but a jewel in the crown of The Decemberists’ wacky adventures. The quintet had their most bizarre gig yet when they found themselves playing to 75,000 people at an early Obama rally in 2008.
“That was really crazy,” he enthuses, “It was before the Primaries so there was a lot of excitement. It was also our first taste of how you could be manipulated by political pundits. All of a sudden these right-wing blogs were talking about how we were communists because we’d toyed with communist kitsch imagery!”
‘There’s still a little bit of graffiti on our Wikipedia page!” he dismays. “Someone said that I saw the Decembrist uprising as being a communist revolution which I don’t, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Meloy gets suddenly animated.
“Unless you choose to print that I said this! Honestly – I’ve mentioned this before and it hasn’t been printed yet.I don’t believe that the Decembrist revolution was a communist revolution, so even if you just put that in, just put a little asterisk at the end, we can go in there and get rid of it…”
Sure thing, Meloy. Anything for a convicted Hibernophile.

The King Is Dead is out now on Rough Trade. The Decemberists play Vicar Street, Dublin on March 4. You can listen to their track 'Down By The Water' on hotpress.com now.