Release – The Decemberists new album, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, will be out on June 14th via YABB Records (Thirty Tigers). The band has released the Salsa-influenced single “Oh No!” off the upcoming collection. It’s dark, but, “it’s a darkness you can dance to,” lead singer Colin Meloy said.
Their ninth studio album after a 6-year hiatus, is a double album produced by Meloy and Tucker Martine and features guest appearances from The Shins’ James Mercer and REM’s Mike Mills.
As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again is not only the longest Decemberists album to date (and their first intentional, proper double-LP, but also their most empathetic and accessible, the band said. The existential slog and capitalist vexation of “The Reapers,” the opiated delusion and jumbled jingoism of “America Made Me,” the guileless tenderness and absolute surrender of “All I Want Is You” makes As It Ever Was the redemptive testament of a band finding new communal hymns by revisiting several old modes at once.
The band’s latest collection, Meloy says, is the best Decemberists album, perhaps even the ultimate realization of 22 years of work. As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again rings with the urgency and ardor of right now, maybe more than ever before.
