It’s about time.

For anyone familiar with Oregon-based baroque pop-rockers, The Decemberists, the full-fledged rock/folk opera that is Hazards of Love should come as no surprise, rather, I’m more than a little startled that this hadn’t happened sooner. While the band has flirted with LP-length storylines before, from their earlier EP, The Tain, to 2006′s, The Crane Wife, this is their first attempt at that most conceited of rock conceits, the rock opera, a genre that has laid waste to many a band before them (see: The Who, Tommy).

Coming from singer and lyricist Colin Meloy, whose written songs about ancient Japanese myths and poor chimney sweeps in Industrial Revolution-era England often require the aid of a dictionary, Hazards of Love is the logical progression in the band’s oeuvre.

An epic seventeen songs separated only by the fact of their names (the album flows from one to the next with nary a pause; Meloy isn’t kidding when he said he first started the record as a musical), the story is your typical Decemberists yarn: fair young lass Margaret gets pregnant via her lover, William, some sort of forest shapeshifter, adventure ensues as Margaret goes into the forest to find him, encountering a forest queen and a backstabbing scoundrel along the way, until the two lovers die in predictable Shakespearean fashion.

Sondheim he’s not.

The story may be threadbare, but the music is decidedly alive, and the Decemberists have not let the lyrical meanderings of their leader to bog down their songwriting. Indeed, much of Hazards of Love is some of their strongest material in years, although with seventeen tracks, there are bounds to be a few missteps. The folk strumming, gentle finger picking, and rustic lyrics of “Hazards of Love” could’ve come off any earlier Decemberists record, but it’s not until the country-rock, piano-pounding twang of “Won’t Want for Love” that the album comes into its own musically.

Do yourself a favor and ignore whatever part of the story Meloy is trying to sell you; it’s the compositions that steal the figurative show here, although when the two coincide, it makes for some of the best highlights of the record. The epic “The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid,” featuring My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden (guest spots being a newfound discovery for the Decemberists, but a proper one for an ensemble endeavor as this), is an exciting, ascending climax of drum rolls, harpsichord, and arcing background harmonies before twisting into one of the most metal-tastic riffs they’ve ever put down as Worden’s powerful vocals announce the forest queen. The band does a good job of painting an emotive theme for each character; the aforementioned queen is dark and chugging, a rock monster that is as heavy and earthy as her namesake, while “The Rake” is a thudding, menacing tune with typical Decemberists lyrical fare (baby killing!) that corresponds well with its dastardly subject. Becky Stark of folksters Lavender Diamond does a passable job as the wispy heroine, and her love songs have just the right quality of innocence and medieval charm.

And this is the Decemberists, a band whose musical ingenuity and unbridled spirit of creativity the press has often overlooked. Just check out the very creepy children’s choir of “Hazards of Love 3,” or the damn-the-torpedoes full-speed rock throttle on display in “The Queen’s Rebuke / The Crossing.” That is one guitar solo I surely would never have seen coming from guitarist Chris Funk, and it shows just what this band is capable of: stretching their boundaries, testing their fans, and, most importantly, doing whatever the hell they want.

While a good portion of the record is certainly unnecessary, instrumental interludes or pointless reprisals meant to connect the story or provide a theatrical background, it does little to drag down the superior songs around them. Some might think Hazards of Love is a record that must be listened to all at once, the better to appreciate its story, but that is definitely not the case: a song like “The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid” or the chameleonic “Annan Water” can stand on their own quite well.

That’s the beauty of what the Decemberists have done here, producing an album that was assuredly meant to tell a whole story but one that succeeds in bit pieces as well. Overblown and entirely ridiculous, sure, but the Decemberists never made any fans being coy: Hazards of Love is the band at their histrionic, melodramatic, wildly fun best, and while it lacks some of the pop accessibility of their earlier work, it’s a record that can firmly take its place among indie rock’s greatest concept efforts.

Capitol 2009

Rating: 8/10