The Decemberists have announced their new album The King Is Dead (Capitol Records, EMI). The album--a set of 10 concise, country-based songs--marks a deliberate turn towards simplicity after the band's wildly ambitious and widely acclaimed 2009 song-cycle The Hazards of Love. Produced once again by Tucker Martine, The King Is Dead features special guest appearances by Americana luminary Gillian Welch on seven tracks and legendary R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck on three tracks.

The King Is Dead showcases the ways in which The Decemberists--Colin Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query, and John Moen--sound just as glorious in simple, stripped-down compositions as they do on the elaborate structures that have defined their work for years.

Meloy points out, however, that creating straightforward, unadorned songs can be at least as hard as building complicated musical epics. "For all my talk about how complex those records were, this one may have been harder to do," he says. "It's a real challenge to make simple music, and lot of times we had to deliberately hold off and keep more space. This record is an exercise in restraint."

The album was recorded in a converted barn at Pendarvis Farm, an 80-acre estate of lush meadows, forest, and Mt. Hood views outside of Portland, and it was the concept of the barn--as recording space and as attitude--that informed the making of The King Is Dead. "We wanted that ethos," he says. "That was the color we wanted the record to have."

To Meloy, in some ways The King Is Dead also represents his own musical journey coming full circle. "Over the last eleven years or so, since I moved to Portland, I feel like I've been mining mostly English traditions for influence", he says. "I guess I've kind of come back to a lot of the more American music that got me going in the first place - R.E.M. and Camper Van Beethoven and all these bands that borrowed from more American traditions like Neil Young and the Byrds."

"Sometimes I kind of miss the epic-ness of the other albums," he continues, "but it's nice to get all of the information across in three minutes. It's like going from reading a novel to reading a bunch of short stories."

As a fitting bookend to the most successful year of the band's career, The Decemberists will release a new EP entitled Long Live The King. Similar to the critically acclaimed, chart-topping bow The King is Dead, the EP is a mostly-acoustic set of 6 Americana-based songs, recorded around the same time as The King is Dead, and including their stunning cover of the Grateful Dead track "Row Jimmy." The EP was produced once again by Tucker Martine.

The Decemberists' The Hazards Of Love, is the follow-up to the group's 2006 breakthrough, The Crane Wife, which NPR listeners voted their favorite album of the year. With their fifth full-length album, the Portland-based quintet of Colin Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query and John Moen solidifies its standing as one of the most innovative creative forces in music today.

In an age when singles rule and the death of the album has been pronounced by many, The Decemberists have fashioned an anomaly: a record that demands to be listened to from start to finish and reveals more with each subsequent play. The 17-song suite, recorded with the band's longtime producer, Tucker Martine, is rooted in ancient language and imagery, yet entirely modern and accessible.

The album began when Meloy - long fascinated by the British folk revival of the 1960s - found a copy of revered vocalist Anne Briggs's 1966 EP, titled The Hazards of Love. Since there was actually no song with the album's title, he set out to write one. Soon he was immersed in something much larger than just a new composition.

The Hazards Of Love tells the tale of a woman named Margaret who is ravaged by a shape-shifting animal; her lover, William; a forest queen; and a cold-blooded, lascivious rake, who recounts with spine-tingling ease how he came "to be living so easy and free." Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden deliver the lead vocals for the female characters, while My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Robyn Hitchcock and the Spinanes' Rebecca Gates appear in supporting roles. The range of sounds reflects the characters' arcs, from the accordion's singsong lilt in "Isn't it a Lovely Night?" to the heavy metal thunder of "The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing."

The Decemberists' album, "The Crane Wife," is thematically based on a tragic Japanese folk tale, but band leader Colin Meloy promises a fair dose of rock'n'roll, rape, murder and violence as well. The set is the fivesome's fourth full-length and their first since moving over to a major label from Kill Rock Stars. Recruiting Death Cab For Cutie's Chris Walla and Seattle mainstay Tucker Martine to man the decks.

The Decemberists know that the psychology of a culture at war is complex; that historical archetypes can inform the masses on current events far better than the evening news; and, perhaps most importantly, that life is ultimately a spectacular and colorful pageant. They remind us that, on any given day, we might rub shoulders with rogue spies and runaway prostitutes, child monarchs and vengeful mariners, boy ghosts, couples contemplating suicide, cannibals and drowning angels. This existence is indeed a spectacle to be revered.

In August of 2004, Rachel Blumberg, Jenny Conlee, Chris Funk, Colin Meloy, and Nate Query set up shop at a former Baptist church in Portland, Oregon. With co-producer Chris Walla at the controls, the five musicians collectively known as The Decemberists emerged three weeks later with the bulk of the work completed for Picaresque (Kill Rock Stars - March 22, 2005), their most ambitious and realized effort to date.

As its title would suggest, Castaways and Cutouts is a record populated with an eclectic array of unlikely characters in various states of abandonment and revelry. While the likes of Spanish gypsies, infant specters, and Turkish prostitutes are not common elements to be found within modern pop music, these figures find ample footing within the songcraft of Mr. Meloy, supported comfortably by the band's lush and orchestral instrumentation. Recorded over a two month period in a warehouse in Portland, Oregon's Industrial Southeast, the record swims gracefully between heart-rending, deftly arranged pop and scrappy off-the-cuff dirge.

The Decemberists have announced the March 13 release of We All Raise Our Voices To The Air (Live Songs 04.11-08.11), a 20-track live double-album (and triple-vinyl set) culled from the band's 2011 tour supporting their chart-topping, Grammy-nominated album The King Is Dead. With songs spanning their entire first decade as a band--from their debut EP 5 Songs through each of their six LP's--We All Raise Our Voices To The Air is the first-ever live album from a band that has grown into one of rock's most thrilling live acts.

Before the January 2011 release of The King Is Dead, TIME magazine made the prescient prediction that the album's release would "mark their crossover to the realm of important American rock groups alongside the likes of Wilco and the White Stripes." They were proven right when the album debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200. Fueled by the #1 AAA radio hit "Down By The Water"--which is nominated for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance at the 54th Grammy Awards--the album has produced three Top 10 AAA singles ("This Is Why We Fight" and "Calamity Song") and become the band's best-selling album of their career, earning them a legion of new fans.

In concert, The Decemberists--lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Colin Meloy, keyboardist & accordionist Jenny Conlee, guitarist Chris Funk, bassist Nate Query, and drummer John Moen, with additional member Sara Watkins on fiddle, guitar and vocals--deliver an unforgettable live experience full of spontaneity. A band of breathtaking versatility, The Decemberists can reach deep into their rich catalog of songs for gorgeous fok-rock gems ("Rise To Me"), murderously driving rockers ("The Rake's Song"), expansive suites ("The Crane Wife 1, 2, and 3"), the worst song Meloy ever wrote ("Dracula's Daughter"), or epic sea shanties that inspire enthusiastic crowd participation ("The Mariner's Revenge Song").

The performances on We All Raise Our Voices To The Air are drawn from 12 different shows at venues including the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Stubb's BBQ in Austin, Marymoor Amphitheatre in Seattle, and their final two shows at McMenamins Edgefield Amphitheatre in their hometown of Portland, which featured the addition of a horn section that can be heard on several songs.

In a review of the band's first of three sold-out shows that kicked off the 2011 tour at New York City's Beacon Theatre, the New York Post wrote that "during this two-hour show, the set spanned the band's 10-year career, but wisely leaned heaviest on the just-released CD, The King Is Dead. Songs from that record made the best case for why the group should be superstars."

"On [Her Majesty], the whimsy and multicolored narrative threads that represented the best of the Decemberists' terrific first album are given room to breathe." -- Magnet

For all intents and purposes, Her Majesty is best described as the charming older brother to the band's previous outing. And, while being recognizably related to its sibling, it is an altogether different beast. Present and accounted for are the Victorian literary tropes, the rakish mariners, and the Dickensian downtrodden that slouched their way across the laser imprinted surface of Castaways and Cutouts. But on Her Majesty, a new cast of characters is introduced, giving further depth to the richly bizarre songcraft of the band's bespectacled leading player, Colin Meloy: an aristocratic Jewess slumming it blindfolded among the exotic avenues of a Chinese bazaar, the coifed and coked-up bon vivants of greater Los Angeles, the writer Myla Goldberg, and a pair of affectionate soldiers celebrating their camaraderie among the mortar blasts and trench mud of WWI Belgium. Musically, the band travels over new territory as well, mining deeper into their Beatle-pop influences to create a record that is as lush as it is intricate.

The Decemberists have announced their new album The King Is Dead (Capitol Records, EMI). The album--a set of 10 concise, country-based songs--marks a deliberate turn towards simplicity after the band's wildly ambitious and widely acclaimed 2009 song-cycle The Hazards of Love. Produced once again by Tucker Martine, The King Is Dead features special guest appearances by Americana luminary Gillian Welch on seven tracks and legendary R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck on three tracks.

The King Is Dead showcases the ways in which The Decemberists--Colin Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query, and John Moen--sound just as glorious in simple, stripped-down compositions as they do on the elaborate structures that have defined their work for years.

Meloy points out, however, that creating straightforward, unadorned songs can be at least as hard as building complicated musical epics. "For all my talk about how complex those records were, this one may have been harder to do," he says. "It's a real challenge to make simple music, and lot of times we had to deliberately hold off and keep more space. This record is an exercise in restraint."

The album was recorded in a converted barn at Pendarvis Farm, an 80-acre estate of lush meadows, forest, and Mt. Hood views outside of Portland, and it was the concept of the barn--as recording space and as attitude--that informed the making of The King Is Dead. "We wanted that ethos," he says. "That was the color we wanted the record to have."

To Meloy, in some ways The King Is Dead also represents his own musical journey coming full circle. "Over the last eleven years or so, since I moved to Portland, I feel like I've been mining mostly English traditions for influence", he says. "I guess I've kind of come back to a lot of the more American music that got me going in the first place - R.E.M. and Camper Van Beethoven and all these bands that borrowed from more American traditions like Neil Young and the Byrds."

"Sometimes I kind of miss the epic-ness of the other albums," he continues, "but it's nice to get all of the information across in three minutes. It's like going from reading a novel to reading a bunch of short stories."

The Decemberists burst onto the scene with Castaways and Cutouts, wowed critics and gained legions of fans with Her Majesty, and then continued the trend with Picaresque. Along with these recorded feats they have been praised for their captivating live shows and never ending lengthy tours. Following the release of their latest album, Picaresque, The Decemberists are everywhere. Really everywhere, in the pages of Rolling Stone and Wired, on NPR, in Nordstrom, on your TV and radio, etc. In the wake of all this Kill Rock Stars is re-releasing their highly acclaimed EP The Tain. This concept EP was previously released last year on Acuarela. The Tain's cornerstone is a cycle of Celtic mythology under the same name and is basically a one epic song divided into five parts. A bit of a rock opera, the Tain has been a live favorite among their fans.

'The Decemberists have made two albums of literate, crackling songs, but The Tain is the best entry into their high-rock theater. The Portland, Oregon, band vividly conjures the clang of battle and the stench of ruined flesh in this mini-epic of marching guitars, bowed upright bass and artful contradiction.'