Even with eight studio albums released by The Decemberists, lead singer Colin Meloy still gets excited about putting out new music.
The ninth album, “‘As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again,” comes out Friday, June 14 via YABB Records. On the same night, the Portland band plays a show at Revolution Hall, “Rumpus at Rev Hall,” at 8 p.m.
There’ll be an album signing event 2 p.m. June 15 at Music Millennium.
“It holds up pretty well, similar to some of the stuff that we did earlier,” Meloy said, of the album. “I’ll leave it up to people to listen to it and determine it,” as in if they like it. “It feels great.”
The band’s second leg of a tour starts July 12 in Bend and culminates Aug. 3 at McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale.
It’s been six long years since the band’s previous album. There are guest appearances from The Shins’ James Mercer and REM’s Mike Mills on the album, which has been produced by Meloy and Tucker Martine.
From publicity: “‘As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again’ is not only the longest Decemberists album to date (double LP with four thematic sides) but also their most empathetic and accessible, its 13 songs like semaphores of mutual recognition for our fraught times and faint hopes.”
The band released “Burial Ground” as the first single, and followed it up with the 19-minute prog rock title “Joan In The Garden.”
And it went all love song with “All I Want Is You.”
Said Meloy, of the love song:
“It’s so bare bones, it lived for a long time in my songwriting notebook, kind of in hiding, before I got up the courage to put it out there. It shares a title and hook with many songs that have come before it, but I like to think I’m merely adding my own take to that tradition.”
The Decemberists, founded in 2000, include Meloy, bassist Nate Query, guitarist Chris Funk, keyboardist Jenny Conlee and drummer John Moen.
“The Decemberists’ distinctive brand of hyper literate folk rock set them apart from the start with the release of their debut EP ‘5 Songs’ in 2001,” publicity states. The band made its full-length debut with “Castaways and Cutouts” in 2002, and followed it up with “Her Majesty the Decemberists (2003) and Picaresque (2005).
The 2004 EP “The Tain” was an 18-minute single-track epic.
The band signed with Capitol Records in 2006, and produced “The Crane Wife.” Later, it was “The King Is Dead,” which included the Grammy-nominated “Down By The Water.”
Several albums followed, and then the six-year recording drought happened. The group celebrated its 20th anniversary with a series of streamed concerts in April 2021, and then toured North America in 2022.
The relationship among band members remains strong, Meloy said.
“We’re a lot older, but we weren’t young — we were relatively young, in our late 20s and early 30s, when we started,” he said.
On another note, Meloy, who has penned children’s books in the past, has been busy working on a book — his first book for adults.
“It’s pretty laborious,” he said, of writing books, “but I do like it.”
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