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THE DECEMBERISTS had planned a hiatus of sorts for the years preceding What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World (2015). But since the U.S. chart-topping The King Is Dead (2011) four years prior, the band:
- Released an EP and live album;
- Recorded a song for The Hunger Games (2012);
- Appeared in Parks & Recreation and The Simpsons;
- And frontman Colin Meloy wrote a children’s book called Wildwood.
Fans noted the band’s gradual change in focus from spinning literary yarns about murderers and ne’er-do-wells towards more personal ruminations on the state of the world on this, their seventh record. Meloy, in interviews at the time of What A Terrible World…’s release, agreed: Wildwood took care of his need to tell tales, giving THE DECEMBERISTS’ music space to say something else.
The album’s title came from a line in the song 12-17-12, named for the day of the Newtown school shooting. It’s a universe away from, say, 2005’s The Mariner’s Revenge Song, a sea shanty revenge epic about two men swallowed by a whale. Meloy had turned 40, had a young family, and had things on his mind. While 12-17-12 is not about the shooting itself, the tragedy has Meloy thinking about the state of the nation he, his wife, and two kids are a part of; the terrible world in which children are gunned down, and the beautiful one in which he has a love-filled home. “Oh my God,” he sings, “what a world you have made here.”
Speaking to DIY Magazine, Meloy said: “I feel like there was a big shift in me. I think for a long time, I wasn’t concerned about writing about myself because I just wasn’t a very interesting focus to write about…but once I’d had kids I had to adopt a new worldview. There was a lot more activity; a lot more things that I would be responsible for and it made me reflect on my place in the world and what I hoped for my kids.” It would be wrong to say THE DECEMBERISTS have been a political band ever since, but it is has continued to inform their writing. Three years later, I’ll Be Your Girl (2018) was inspired by Meloy’s depression over President Trump’s election. By the end of its touring cycle, he felt drained singing songs night after night that came from a place of anger and hopelessness. One song, Everything Is Awful, dispensed of all metaphor and allegory and went for broke. The band continued wrestling with America on last year’s As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again (2024) on America Made Me, telling Billboard the song was a reflection on Meloy’s experience with Americanism.
Maybe it’s because What A Terrible World… followed the jangly Americana (not to mention summer-sun album art) of The King Is Dead that the contrast was so severe. In synesthesia terms, The King Is Dead’s yellow was replaced by cold, clear blues on cuts like Make You Better, which The Line Of Best Fit described as a by-the-book love song. It’s also the track that’s embedded itself in THE DECEMBERISTS’ live shows, the one constant from a 14-track, almost hour-long selection box. On What A Terrible World…’s variety and length, Meloy reflected to Billboard in 2024: “I had regrets that What A Terrible World… wasn’t a double record. Weirdly, we kind of split the difference with that record. It should have been a very short record or a very long record. In my head, it exists as a double record.”
That the record was a moment of transformation for THE DECEMBERISTS is there in the text. Opener The Singer Addresses His Audience sees Meloy embody a singer tussling with the ever-shifting dynamic between artist and fan: “We know, we know, we belong to ya, we know you threw your arms around us, in the hopes we wouldn’t change, but we had to change some.” Talking to the Guardian, Meloy says this track and Anti-Summersong came from feeling ‘almost embittered’ right after a tour. If you think of THE DECEMBERISTS as a band with a certain shtick – whimsical, flowery, dramatic – you are thinking of them pre-What A Terrible World… They haven’t been that band in a while. Speaking about the balance between playing the old hits, keeping fans happy, and developing as artists, Meloy said to the Guardian: “Do people want us to keep having The Mariner’s Revenge Song to finish every set? I guess they do. There’s a certain obligation that you have to satisfy, and I think that’s why people continue to come to our shows. We’re mindful that there is a tacit agreement; we’re going to suck it up.” The sea shanty was a staple for a few more years, but, according to setlist.fm, has only been played once since 2018. There is plenty worthy of taking its place, such as Joan In The Garden, an almost-20-minute prog epic about Joan of Arc from last year’s As It Ever Was… They have to change some.
Although it never topped the Billboard charts like The King Is Dead, What A Terrible World… still went top 10 and was almost universally met with praise, with a notable detractor writing in Pitchfork that it was “over-long and under ambitious.” Everyone else appeared to appreciate how welcoming it was, with less need of a dictionary beside you to decode Meloy’s lyricism and no multi-track suites. If the album had a concept, it was that there was to be no concept. That may be its legacy: this is the sound of THE DECEMBERISTS serving up a record of concise and quality songwriting, freed from their own majestic expectations, ready to welcome a second act as indie stalwarts who keep on keeping on. We’re lucky to have them.
What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World was originally released on January 20 2015 via Rough Trade.
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