And audiences have more of a voice than ever with the advent of the Internet. Having an audience, you may want to continue doing things on your own terms, but that becomes more challenging when there are expectations. I think that it’s an odd relationship, and it’s just that particular singer trying to come to terms with that aspect of it. I shouldn’t say abusive, but it can be antagonistic.

That relationship between bands or singers and their audience, it’s kind of a funny relationship and abusive in its own right, going both ways. In my head it was the singer of a boy band coming to terms with how everything in their life and their career has changed. That was my imagining the viewpoint of a singer in a band. What was the origin of “The Singer Addresses His Audience”? Not to say that there wasn’t room for us to challenge one another, but for the most part it was as if we were all climbing under the same comfortable duvet on a cold winter’s night and snuggling close. But we’ve been around long enough and we’re adults, so everybody comes back to it in a very – I hate to say professional way, because it sounds so austere and sterile, but everybody knows what they do well at this point. We’ve had charity shows here and there and done a few other projects. It’s not like we’ve been strangers to one another during the intervening years. When the band gets back together, does everyone fall into old roles and habits? I feel like I’ve spent the last four years trying to get my head wrapped around that idea that those things can live together symbiotically. That’s changing daily, but I think the point is that it’s both. “There are a lot of people who know me just for the books, which is strange to me, and then discover the band later,” Meloy told us on the phone from his home in Oregon.ĭo you come down more on the world is terrible or the world is beautiful side?

Not that they sat around drinking artisanal lattes: Although lead singer Colin Meloy has yet to get his stage musical off the ground, he did publish a trilogy of YA fantasy novels: Wildwood (which hit the New York Times bestseller lists), Under Wildwood and Wildwood Imperium, all illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis. So what did they do after their sixth LP, 2011’s The King Is Dead, made it all the way to the top? They took four years to release its follow-up, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World (due January 20th). Nobody expected the Decemberists, the theatrically-minded indie-folk band from Portland, Oregon, to ever hit Number One on the Billboard album chart.

Colin meloy books