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Mar 09, 2018 By Christopher Roberts The Decemberists

The Decemberists are releasing a new album, I’ll Be Your Girl, on March 16 via Capitol. Previously they shared its first single, “Severed” (it was one of our Songs of the Week). Now they have shared another song from the album, album opener “Once In My Life.” John Congleton produced the album, which is being touted as a change of direction for the band as they embrace synth-pop. At first “Once In My Life” seems like a stripped down regular Decemberists song, before the synths do come in (and eventually the female backing vocals as well) and it does indeed have a synth-pop vibe. Listen below, followed by the band’s upcoming tour dates.

Vocalist/guitarist Colin Meloy had this to say about the album in a previous press release: “We were talking about music and our references. It kept coming back to Roxy Music and early glam, and we dove in with that in mind. The Decemberists are a record-collectors’ band, we’re all fans and scholars of music, so there a lot of touch points that we all get, but they don’t always come through. So we were trying to embrace that Bryan Ferry aspect, that kind of set the tone.”

“When you’ve been a band for 17 years, inevitably there are habits you fall into,” Meloy further explained. “So our ambition this time was really just to get out of our comfort zone. That’s what prompted working with a different producer and using a different studio. We wanted to free ourselves from old patterns and give ourselves permission to try something different.”

The album is the follow-up to 2015’s What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World. “On the last record,” Meloy said in the press release, “there were moments when I thought I was making familiar choices. I tried to be mindful in the songwriting process of challenging myself and being a little more critical. The idea was, how can we make unfamiliar choices, turn off the light a little and grope around in the dark a bit?”

In addition to Meloy, the band’s lineup remains guitarist Chris Funk, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, bassist Nate Query, and drummer John Moen. According to Meloy, “Severed” was meant to be more of a punk song, but they decided they needed to rethink. “Jenny set this arpeggio throughout it, and it became like an early New Order song,” Meloy continued. “And I had forgotten that when we made the demo, I also started a file to turn it into more of a Depeche Mode song - I actually wanted it to be a synth song all along.”

Meloy summed up I’ll Be Your Girl as such: “Making music is an infinite choose-your-own-adventure, and when you go down one path, the other paths get sealed off. So every time we could, we said, ‘If this is what our impulses would tell us to do, let’s try to imagine it in a different way.’”

The Decemberists Tour Dates:

03/22 Fox Theater @ Pomona, CA
03/23 Arlington Theatre @ Santa Barbara, CA
03/24 Innings Festival @ Tempe, AZ
04/06 Palace Theatre @ St. Paul, MN
04/08Riverside Theater @ Milwaukee, WI
04/10 Chicago Theatre @ Chicago, IL
04/13-14 Ryman Auditorium @ Nashville, TN
04/15 Coca-Cola Roxy Theatre @ Atlanta, GA
04/16 North Charleston Performing Arts Center @ Charleston, SC
04/18 Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre @ Charlotte, NC
04/19 Durham Performing Arts Center @ Durham, NC
04/20 The National @ Richmond, VA
04/21 The Anthem @ Washington, DC
04/23 Smith Opera House @ Geneva, NY
04/24 Agora Theatre @ Cleveland, OH
04/25 Peabody Opera House @ St. Louis, MO
05/22 Red Rocks Amphitheatre @ Morrison, CO +
05/23 Uptown Theater @ Kansas City, MO
05/25 Hill Auditorium @ Ann Arbor, MI
05/26 Artpark @ Lewiston, NY
05/27 Boston Calling Festival @ Boston, MA
05/28 MTELUS @ Montreal, QC
05/30 Sony Centre for the Performing Arts @ Toronto, ON
05/31 Benedum Center @ Pittsburgh, PA
06/02 Murat Theatre at Old National Centre @ Indianapolis, IN
06/05 Iroquois Amphitheater @ Louisville, KY
06/07 Mann Center for the Performing Arts @ Philadelphia, PA ^
06/08 College Street Music Hall @ New Haven, CT ^
06/09 The Green at Shelburne Museum @ Shelburne, VT ^
06/10 State Theatre @ Portland, ME ^
06/13 BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival at Prospect Park Bandshell @ Brooklyn, NY ^
06/15 MASS MoCA @ North Adams, MA
06/21 Paramount Theatre @ Seattle, WA ^
06/22-23 - Edgefield @ Troutdale, OR ^
08/04-05 Travelers’ Rest @ Missoula, MT

^ with M. Ward
+ with Whitney

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