For fans of chiming, literate, lovelorn pop, Picaresque is an absolute treasure trove.   Full text...

The Decemberists somehow just get better and better with every release.  Full text...

While it is extremely different from the mainstream alt/punk/emo scene currently floating around, it is a refreshing change, chock full of intelligent lyrics about quirky scenarios in lieu of mindless rhymes about teenage angst.  Full text...

What makes Picaresque a great album, however, is the snug synthesis between the rest of the bandmates playing in relation to Meloy's verbose lyrics.  Full text...

The Decemberist's latest release tells a number of different stories, but the focus is always on the narrator. We live in our minds, the songs suggest, so be careful.  Full text...

As strong a follow-up to Her Majesty as one could have hoped for, Picaresque should cement the Decemberists' reputation as an indie-pop staple.  Full text...

The Decemberists have made their first tangible step towards greatness, as the band --- Meloy, especially --- seems fully aware of its own potential and confident enough to try to reach it.  Full text...

Most tracks are storytellers that point to a more mature, intelligent form of lyric writing that was evident before, but just not convincing enough.  Full text...

Picaresque, like any great collection of short stories, confronts a cadre of times and places and captures the sound of each accordingly.  Full text...

"I am a writer, writer of fictions," Meloy claims on "Engine Driver," and that's exactly what he does, but it's what everyone else does too, the only real difference being Meloy hits the thesaurus and maritime literature a bit harder than most.   Full text...

This is a new side of the Decemberists: angry, impassioned, and more in touch with the world than ever.   Full text...

As The Decemberists hone their musical prose, they're upping the bar for "literate" songcraft: It's no longer sufficient to leaf through Kafka in the aisle at Barnes & Noble; to keep apace with Meloy, you can start by enrolling in a post-graduate lit course. At an Ivy League university of your choice.   Full text...

Spanish child monarchs, male prostitutes, suicidal secret lovers, failed sportsmen, forlorn fiction writers, cold war spies and mariners trapped inside the belly of a giant whale? This is either a glorious caffeine trip or the new Decemberists album.  Full text...

The Decemberists show little growth on their third full length of indie pop, Picaresque.   Full text...

Opening with a parade, ending in a double suicide and climaxing with a murder in the belly of a whale, Picaresque is a triumph of theatrical imagination: the culmination of the Decemberists' steady march to greatness in four years of enriched storytelling and folk-rock invention.   Full text...

It's been almost two weeks and twenty-five cups of coffee and I'm still no closer to having a firm grasp on Picaresque, the third album from opera-rock (and not rock-opera) quintet the Decemberists, than I was when it arrived stuffed in a manila envelope.   Full text...

At times The Decemberists sail close to being an horrific hybrid of The Might Be Giants and The Coral - all arched eyebrows and accordions. And that's fine if you like that kind of thing.   Full text...

Then again, maybe it only means that the Decemberists' music isn't rock and roll, and doesn't like me.   Full text...