The Crane Wife

The Crane Wife
Studio album by The Decemberists
Released October 3, 2006
Recorded March–June 2006
Genre Indie rock, folk rock, progressive rock
Length 60:10
Label Capitol/Rough Trade
Producer Tucker Martine and Christopher Walla
The Decemberists chronology
Picaresque
(2005)		 The Crane Wife
(2006)		 The Hazards of Love
(2009)

The Crane Wife is the fourth album by The Decemberists, released in 2006. It was produced by Tucker Martine and Chris Walla, and is the band's first album on the Capitol Records label. The album was inspired by a Japanese folk tale, and centers on two song cycles, The Crane Wife and The Island, the latter inspired by William Shakespeare's The Tempest. National Public Radio listeners voted The Crane Wife the best album of 2006.[1]

The album cover was designed by the Portland artist Carson Ellis, Colin Meloy's wife, who has created artwork for each of the band's albums.

The story of The Crane Wife

The Crane Wife is an old Japanese folktale. While there are many variations of the tale, a common version is that a poor man finds an injured crane on his doorstep (or outside with an arrow in it), takes it in and nurses it back to health. After he releases the crane, a woman appears at his doorstep with whom he falls in love and marries. Because they need money, his wife offers to weave wondrous clothes out of silk that they can sell at the market, but only if he agrees never to watch her making them. They begin to sell them and live a comfortable life, but he soon makes her weave them more and more. Oblivious to his wife's declining health, his greed increases. He eventually peeks in to see what she is doing to make the silk she weaves so desirable. He is shocked to discover that at the loom is a crane plucking feathers from her own body and weaving them into the loom. The crane, seeing him, flies away and never returns.

"When the War Came"

This song is a portrayal of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. During the siege, the German army surrounded the city entirely, preventing anything from going in or out. As a result, many died of starvation, and the final death-toll is estimated to be over one million. The song also has a political undertone to it; it is stated that despite the fact that people put their faith in the government which swore to protect them, they ended up being left unprepared and unequipped to fight off the Germans.[2] The song references Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist who died in a Soviet prison camp, in the lyrics. Colin Meloy explained:

"The last great book I read was Hunger by Elise Blackwell. It's about the siege of Leningrad in World War II, and there was a botanical institute. During the siege, which lasted a long time, the entire population was starving, but all of the botanists in the institute swore themselves to protect the catalog of seeds and plants and things, from not only a starving population, but also from themselves. It's pretty amazing. I actually ended up writing "When the War Came", a song on the new record, about that."[2]

"Shankill Butchers"

"Shankill Butchers" is about the Shankill Butchers, a faction of the Ulster Volunteer Force. The UVF is a Protestant paramilitary organization. The Shankill Butchers split off from the UVF in the mid-1970s and carried out a series of grisly murders. These are the basis of the song. The Butchers abducted seven random Catholic citizens of Northern Ireland and killed them in the middle of the night by slashing their throats. They also carried out several other shootings and bomb attacks, killing as many as 32 people.[3]

Track listing

All songs written by Colin Meloy.

No. Title Length
1. "The Crane Wife 3"   4:18
2. "The Island: Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel the Drowning"   12:26
3. "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)"   4:19
4. "O Valencia!"   3:48
5. "The Perfect Crime #2"   5:33
6. "When the War Came"   5:06
7. "Shankill Butchers"   4:40
8. "Summersong"   3:31
9. "The Crane Wife 1 & 2"   11:20
10. "Sons & Daughters"   5:14
Total length:
 60:10
Bonus tracks

Reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic84/100[4]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[5]
The A.V. ClubA[6]
Blender[7]
Entertainment WeeklyB+[8]
The Guardian[9]
NME6/10[10]
Pitchfork Media8.4/10[11]
Rolling Stone[12]
Spin[13]
Uncut[14]

The Crane Wife was highly acclaimed by music critics, earning an 84% positive out of all reviews culled by Metacritic,[4] and remains one of the Decemberists' best-reviewed efforts. Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "the best Jethro Tull album since Heavy Horses",[15] while Stephen M. Deusner of Pitchfork Media wrote that the album "further magnifies and refines [the Decemberists'] strengths" and that their folk rock has been "honed to an incisively sharp point".[16] It was ranked #41 on Pitchfork Media's list of the top 50 albums of 2006, #19 on PopMatters' list of the top 60 albums of 2006,[17] and JustPressPlay named it the second best album of the 2000s.[18] In a listener poll by National Public Radio, The Crane Wife was picked as the #1 album of 2006.[19]

Personnel

According to the liner notes of The Crane Wife.

The Decemberists

Additional musicians

Production

In popular culture

References

  1. ↑ "NPR Music: NPR Listeners Pick the Best CDs of 2006". Npr.org. December 7, 2006. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
  2. 1 2 "When The War Came by The Decemberists Songfacts". Songfacts.com. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
  3. ↑ Dillon, Martin (March 2, 1999). The Shankill Butchers: The Real Story of Cold-Blooded Mass Murder. Psychology Press. p. xvi. ISBN 0415922313.
  4. 1 2 "Reviews for The Crane Wife by The Decemberists". Metacritic. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  5. ↑ Monger, James Christopher. "The Crane Wife – The Decemberists". AllMusic. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  6. ↑ Murray, Noel (October 3, 2006). "The Decemberists: The Crane Wife". The A.V. Club. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
  7. ↑ Wolk, Douglas (November 2006). "The Decemberists: The Crane Wife". Blender (53): 138. Archived from the original on October 19, 2006. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  8. ↑ Vozick-Levinson, Simon (September 29, 2006). "The Crane Wife". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  9. ↑ Lynskey, Dorian (January 26, 2007). "The Decemberists, The Crane Wife". The Guardian. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  10. ↑ "The Decemberists: The Crane Wife". NME: 50. July 23, 2005.
  11. ↑ Deusner, Stephen M. (October 3, 2006). "The Decemberists: The Crane Wife". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  12. ↑ Christgau, Robert (September 28, 2006). "The Crane Wife". Rolling Stone. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  13. ↑ Raftery, Brian (November 2006). "War of Words". Spin 22 (11): 103. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  14. ↑ Scoppa, Bud (January 16, 2007). "The Decemberists – The Crane Wife". Uncut. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Positively Prog", Jim DeRogatis, Chicago Sun-Times, Nov 5, 2006
  16. ↑ Deusner, Stephen M. (October 3, 2006). "The Decemberists: The Crane Wife". Pitchfork Media.
  17. ↑ PopMatters Staff (December 23, 2006). "Best Albums of 2006". Popmatters.
  18. ↑ "Fifty Years of Great Music: The Top 100 Albums of the 2000s". Justpressplay.net. January 14, 2010. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
  19. ↑ NPR Listeners Pick the Best CDs of 2006
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