| | Decemberists Crane Wife CD Decemberists Discography of CDs
 (2 Customer Reviews)
In 2006, the Decemberists unveiled their Capitol Records debut, THE CRANE WIFE, after three albums for the indie label Kill Rock Stars. Happily, the revered Portland, Oregon-based crew, captained by singer/guitarist Colin Meloy, made the journey into major waters with their quirky, days-of-old sound firmly intact, as revealed on the wistful acoustic "The Crane Wife 3" and the more upbeat "O Valencia!" which stands out as one of the Decemberists' catchiest songs. The group also indulges in the more dramatic, narrative aspect of its aesthetic on two extended tracks that each pass the 10-minute mark, proving without a doubt that any potential corporate allegiance is far outweighed by the fascinating siren call of Meloy's own muse.
The Decemberists: Colin Meloy (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, percussion); Chris Funk (guitar, electric guitar, pedal steel guitar, banjo, bouzouki, hammer dulcimer, hurdy-gurdy, percussion, background vocals); Eyvind Kang (violin, viola); Nate Query (cello, upright bass, electric bass, percussion, background vocals); Jenny Conlee (accordion, Wurlitzer piano, Hammond b-3 organ, pump organ, Moog synthesizer, glockenspiel, percussion, background vocals); Christopher Walla (keyboards, background vocals); John Moen (drums, percussion, background vocals); Steve Drizos (drums); Ezra Holbrook (background vocals).
Rolling Stone (p.69) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[The] affectations are rendered tolerable by Meloy's unmistakable melodic gift....There's a kick in the way song after song masks his darkish vision in elegantly hooky arrangements..."
Rolling Stone (p.105) - Ranked #23 in Rolling Stone's "The Top 50 Albums Of 2006" -- "[W]ith electric guitars, prog-rock bravado and even Seventies funk..."
Spin (p.103) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[Meloy's] verses are sharp and smart....This is the best-sounding Decembrists album to date."
Spin (p.61) - Ranked #11 in Spin's "The 40 Best Albums of 2006" -- "[T]he band's emotive narratives...feel very much here and now."
Entertainment Weekly (p.68) - "Colin Meloy specializes in lurid historical dramas....Several of these studies in heartbreak and homicide rank among his most moving." -- Grade: B+
Q (p.99) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "It's rendered intriguing by a liberated approach that touches on everything from sea shanties to Jewish klezmer music without ever losing sight of the tune."
Uncut (p.73) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[They are] twisting the esoteric into arresting and complex new shapes."
Alternative Press (p.188) - "[S]hrewder minds among us will be right at home with the complex wordplay and tragic love in 'O Valencia!' and the three-part title track, as well as the new wrinkles of prog rock and art-school funk..."
Magnet (p.93) - "THE CRANE WIFE is an admirable experiment, the work of a band approaching the thorny major-label issue by willfully mucking with a proven sound."
Q (Magazine) (p.78) - Ranked #28 in Q's "The 50 Best Albums Of 2007" -- "[With] nods to nu-folk, baroque pop and even '70s prog." Crane Wife Music | List Price | $18.98 (You save $7.69) | | Category | Rock/Pop Albums, Pop CDs, Folk, Rock | | Label | Capitol / EMI | | Orig Year | 2006 | | All Time Sales Rank |  6985  | | CD Universe Part number | 7279684 | | Catalog number | 53984 | | Discs | 1 | | Release Date | Oct 03, 2006 | | Studio/Live | Studio | | Mono/Stereo | Stereo | | Producer | Tucker Martine; Chris Walla | | Personnel | Christopher Walla - keyboards, background vocals
Eyvind Kang - violin, viola
Chris Funk - guitar, electric guitar, pedal steel guitar, banjo, bouzouki, hammer dulcimer, hurdy-gurdy, percussion, background vocals
Colin Meloy - vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, percussion
John Moen - drums, percussion, background vocals
Jenny Conlee - accordion, Wurlitzer piano, Hammond b-3 organ, pump organ, Moog synthesizer, glockenspiel, percussion, background vocals
Nate Query - cello, upright bass, electric bass, percussion, background vocals
Ezra Holbrook - background vocals
Steve Drizos - drums
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Decemberists Crane Wife Songs Purchase Crane Wife CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Decemberists Castaways And Cut-Outs CD (2002)
Crane Wife album
 $11.99    
The minor-key opener "Leslie Anne Levine" announces the band's m.o.: this is moody, sensitive music that spins yarns of the downtrodden and outcast. Shifting, multi-part epics like "Odalisque" offer a counterpoint to streamlined rock-influenced tunes like "July, July!," and it doesn't get any better than "Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect," featuring Meloy's beautiful, image-rich lyrics and a melody that melts in the mind. From its admirable songcraft ...
| | Arcade Fire Funeral CD (2004)
Crane Wife CD music
$11.89
This Montreal ensemble's fiery debut is marked by surging guitars, soulful strings, driving drums, brilliant bass lines, and the quavering vocals of married couple Win Butler and Regine Chassagne. The group's song structures careen through a vast territory of musical and personal history, with lyrics warm with memories of childhood neighborhoods and deceased loved ones, resulting in an alternating current of joy and sadness.
Favorably compared to the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, and Broken Social Scene, the Arcade Fire's sound seems to come from a lifetime of listening to the Cure, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and many others--even a dose of soul gets worked into these grand anthems. Chassagne delivers some spellbinding vocals on "Haiti," while the tinkling piano and strings on "Crown of Love" conjure up a heartbroken ...
| | Decemberists Picaresque CD (2005)
Crane Wife music CDs
$13.69
The Decemberists' third full-length release takes the fanciful lyrical subjects and defiantly non-rock musical tendencies of CASTAWAYS AND CUT-OUTS and HER MAJESTY THE DECEMBERISTS and infuses them with the more muscular and electric sound of the 2003 mini-concept album, THE TAIN. The combination provides singer/songwriter Colin Meloy and crew with their first true masterpiece, an album that not only fulfills, but exceeds, the promise of their earlier records.
Meloy's pet obsessions with historical romance and the sea get their due, culminating in the nearly nine-minute suite "The Mariner's Revenge Song," but he also examines more real-world topics in the Morrissey-like portrait of runaway teenage hustlers "On the Bus Mall" and the embittered social commentary of "16 Military Wives." The true highlights, however, are the sarcastically jaunty Kinks-like shuffle ...
| | Yo La Tengo I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass CD (2006)
Crane Wife songs
$9.95
With 2006's cheekily titled I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU AND I WILL BEAT YOUR ASS, the beloved indie-rock trio Yo La Tengo presents a dynamic set of songs that echo the band's past, while notably downplaying the soporific atmospherics ...
| | Hold Steady Boys & Girls In America CD (2006)
Crane Wife album
$11.49
The Strokes' breakthrough of the early 2000s made indie rock safe for unabashed retro stylings, and no band embraced this ethos more than Brooklyn's the Hold Steady. Synonymous with "throwback" and "bar band," their excellent debut heralded the return of spirited, no-frills rock. Whereas that record brilliantly fused indie aesthetics with the blue-collarisms of Springsteen and Thin Lizzy, BOYS AND GIRLS IN AMERICA, their third full-length and Vagrant debut, finds them getting away from indie rock for a full-blown Springsteen fixation.
The whole record echoes the piano-driven orchestral bombast of BORN TO RUN particularly on the opening track, "Stuck Between Stations" (read: "Thunder Road") and the drunken ballad "First Night" ...
| | Arcade Fire Neon Bible CD (2007)
Crane Wife CD music
$12.09
Almost three years after the Arcade Fire's 2004 full-length debut, FUNERAL, stunned indie-rock fans with its majestic scope and romantic ferocity, the Montreal-based ensemble returned with NEON BIBLE. Although the album lacks the from-out-of-nowhere punch ...
| | Star Inc Dream Age CD (2007) (Import)
Crane Wife music CDs
$10.49
| | Mark Seymour Daytime & The Dark CD (2005) (Import)
Crane Wife songs
$21.69
| | Harold Budd By The Dawn's Early Light CD (1991)
Crane Wife album
$13.85
| | American Tribal Ensemble, Vol. 1 CD (2004)
Crane Wife CD music
$20.19
| | Revival Horses Of War CD (2007)
Crane Wife music CDs
$13.85
| | Lele Battista Le Ombre CD (2007) (Import)
Crane Wife songs
$18.39
| | Mcrae, Carmen & Dave Brubeck Take Five CD (2008) (Import) Japan
Crane Wife album
$41.39
| | Bruce Cockburn Charity Of Night CD (1997) Reissue
Crane Wife CD music
$15.05
Poetic images are scattered like stars across the sky in Bruce Cockburn's 23rd album, particularly images of darkness and light. In these songs, lights sweep through the dark, shapes appear in the near dark, shadows form. "Ice cube in a dark drink shines like starlight/Starlight shines like glass shards in dark hair," Cockburn sings on "Night Train." Cockburn likes to pin down visceral images that can make his songs universal. On "Pacing The Cage," he sings, "I've proven who I am so many times/The magnetic strip's worn thin/And each time I was someone else/And everyone was taken in."
THE CHARITY OF NIGHT features an amazing core band that includes vibraphonist Gary Burton, drummer Gary Craig and bassist Rob Wasserman. Dropping in as guests are the likes of Ani DiFranco, Bonnie Raitt and Patty ...
| | David Bowie Space Oddity CDs (1972) Remastered; Special Edition; Digipak
Crane Wife music CDs
$20.99
SPACE ODDITY was originally released as MAN OF WORDS, MAN OF MUSIC on Mercury in 1969.
SPACE ODDITY is an Enhanced audio CD which contains regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Digitally remastered by Peter Mew & Nigel Reeve (1999, Abbey Road Studios, London, England).
SPACE ODDITY was the first record on which David Bowie looked and sounded like the Bowie whom the world has come to know. One glance at the spooky, androgynous face that adorns the record was enough to signal that the Anthony Newley-influenced, light-pop singer who sang the novelty number "The Laughing Gnome" a few years earlier was a thing of the past. Leaving behind the mannered, English music hall-isms of his initial recordings, Bowie roughened up the sound, creating a ragged, eclectic mix of folk and rock tinged with electronic sounds. The record yielded his first American hit, and began the singer's soon-to-be meteoric rise to international rock icon-hood.
The title track, a sci-fi mini-epic, is an enduring classic in which Bowie squeezes every bit of drama from both his dour low range and the soaring upper reaches of his voice. Even after decades of continued airplay, "Space Oddity" is surprising for its intricate arrangement, nifty guitar playing, and palpable sense of interplanetary estrangement. Other ...
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