The world faces no shortage of hyper-literate American songwriters fashioning their book-learnin' into ambitious, whimsical folk-pop, but few can spin a yarn or hone a melody as persuasively as the Decemberists' Colin Meloy. The Crane Wife is his grandest enterprise yet, partly based on a Japanese folk-tale and peopled with murderers, thieves and homesick soldiers. Why write what you know when you can write about the American civil war and the Shankill butchers instead?
The centre-piece is a heroically barmy prog-rock three-parter called The Island, which is just flamboyant enough to work. Elsewhere, the Decemberists' expanded palette embraces quasi-disco, lumbering hard-rock and a beautiful duet with Laura Veirs that builds into a miniature Cold Mountain. It is all as self-consciously stagey as a Wes Anderson movie - too arch and florid to really engage the heart, but bold and wondrous entertainment none the less.
