Decemberists, The - The King is Dead Vinyl Record

After the sprawling rock opera of Hazards Of Love, The Decemberists did the one thing nobody expected: they got small. The King Is Dead, from 2011, is ten concise songs built on acoustic guitar, harmonica and pedal steel, closer to R.E.M. and vintage country radio than to anything in their earlier catalog of sea shanties and murder ballads.

They recorded it in a converted barn on Pendarvis Farm, eighty acres of meadow and forest outside Portland with Mount Hood in the window, and the room shows up in the sound. Tucker Martine produced again. Gillian Welch sings harmony throughout, and Peter Buck plays guitar on three tracks, including Calamity Song, which wears its Document era jangle openly and happily.

It became the band's first number one album. Colin Meloy's writing loses none of its detail in the stripped down setting, and the two seasonal hymns at the center are among the prettiest things he has written. A good place to start if the earlier records seemed daunting.

Side A
1. Don't Carry It All
2. Calamity Song
3. Rise To Me
4. Rox In The Box
5. January Hymn

Side B
1. Down By The Water
2. All Arise!
3. June Hymn
4. This Is Why We Fight
5. Dear Avery