The Decemberists formed in Portland, Oregon, in 2000, and with their latest, have released nine full-length studio albums.
Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy’s keening, reedy, distinctively traditional-Irish singing voice has always seemed to me like a tiny rebellion against the homogenizing effects of globalization on music. Over the past 75 years, the imitation of American pop and rock has spread like a pandemic—making the indelibility of Meloy’s Irish heritage on his sound a refreshing presence in modern U.S.-based indie folk. That, paired with the singer/songwriter/guitarist’s penchant for both novelistic and classic-prog-inspired storytelling, has kept the music of the Decemberists evergreen over the past two decades.
As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again is the Portland, Oregon-based band’s ninth studio full-length, and their first in six years. “We’ve had a long arc of experimentation,” says supporting guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk, reflecting on how the album partially honors various mosaic fragments of the band’s past works, while also expanding on them in a wise, informed, and beautiful, if not subtle, progression. “At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with going to a studio and making a record without a narrative. So, there’s no smoke and mirrors on this one.”
On As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, Meloy and Funk, joined by bassist Nate Query, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, and drummer John Moen, revisit the country twangs heard on The King Is Dead(2011), with “Long White Veil” and “All I Want Is You”; and even traipse back into the more worldly folk realm heard on Picaresque (2005) with the playful, chiming “Burial Ground” and folk-tango “Oh No!” Others, like the lo-fi electroacoustic, Grandaddy-esque “Born to the Morning,” build on elements from their previous release, 2018’s I’ll Be Your Girl—a record that’s pleasantly peppered with synths extracted straight from the Twin Peaks-, a-ha-, Tears for Fears-era of composition, and lyrics that could have been written by Moz himself. (“Oh, unabashedly,” says Meloy, moments after he recognizes the copy of the Smiths’ Hatful of Hollow seen mounted on the wall behind me on our Zoom call.)
“At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with going to a studio and making a record without a narrative. So, there’s no smoke and mirrors on this one.” —Chris Funk
The album concludes with “Joan in the Garden,” a 19-minute suite inspired by the story of Joan of Arc, which shamelessly hijacks the previous 49 minutes of rhapsodic folk songs with a summoning of Pink Floyd long-form-composition aesthetic, à la “Echoes,” “Sheep,” and “Dogs.” Sixteen minutes in, the spirit of Judas Priest rears its head with a muscular metal gallop that carries the track to a sudden and satisfying halt.
On As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again,the Decemberists subtly call back to some past markers in their evolution, while still growing in their multifaceted traditional-, pop-, and prog-folk palette.
It’s been 18 years since the Decemberists’ The Crane Wife(2006), whose second track, “The Island,” rises with Keith Emerson-style synth towards the end of its 12-minute wayfaring, and 15 years since The Hazards of Love (2009), a crowning folk-rock opera in their overall discography. Yet, fans likely haven’t forgotten those earlier bold (and somewhat left-field) infusions of ’70s-prog dialect, and may welcome As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again’s final, albeit extended, punctuation. What may come as a surprise, however, is that Meloy finds “a lot of prog to be sort of unlistenable.
“But,” he continues, “I have a weird kind of intellectual love for it. Being an ardent music fan, I can say I don’t really love Bob Dylan that much, for example, but I know everything about his career. I own so many records of his. There are certain people that, even if you don’t adore them or they don’t speak to your inner heart, you know how important they are, and you can see their contribution.”
Intersecting with that perspective is the fun fact that Meloy studied English, theater, and creative writing in college, and has a separate career as a children’s book author, with seven published works. “[Stories are] where my heart is, and that’s what drew me to people like the Pogues, Robyn Hitchcock, the Smiths. There’s a story being told, one way or another, in any of their songs,” he shares. “Prog also really lends itself to telling a longer story, a more sophisticated story. It kind of started with ‘California One’ on our first record, which is toying with these sort of longer-form suite songs, which can be owed to ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant’ by Billy Joel as much as anything Genesis did with Peter Gabriel. But I also think it was an opportunity to set ourselves apart from how we were being perceived [in the beginning].”
The Decemberists, from left to right: drummer John Moen, frontman Colin Meloy, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, and bassist Nate Query.
Photo by Holly Andres
Speaking of setting themselves apart, Funk says that when the band was coming up in the early ’00s, they were one of the first in the indie-folk-rock scene to bring a broader array of folk instruments into their mostly “rock band” arrangements. Starting with their 2002 debut Castaways and Cutouts, the multi-instrumentalist has recorded a variety of stringed instruments on Decemberists albums aside from standard guitars, including dobro, pedal steel, lap steel, bouzouki, banjo, tenor guitar, baritone guitar, and mandolin. Funk has also contributed performances on other odds and ends, such as theremin, hammered dulcimer, Marxophone (a hammered, fretless zither), hurdy-gurdy, and synths.
“At the time when we signed to Kill Rock Stars [in 2003] and I moved to the Pacific Northwest,” says Funk, “there weren’t really rock bands with accordions [played in the Decemberists by Jenny Conlee] and pedal steels. And we really stuck out from our peer group. I think it was just wanting to expand our palette. Historically, there’s a lot of world-building in the Decemberists, so [I was thinking], what else could live inside that world? And then with the next record, how can we tear down that world and create something new?”
“Historically, there’s a lot of world-building in the Decemberists, so [I was thinking], what else could live inside that world?” —Chris Funk
That inspiration came in part from growing up listening to ’80s groups like R.E.M., whose guitarist Peter Buck first recorded mandolin on their sixth studio album, 1988’s Green. “I don’t even think I knew what a mandolin was when [I first heard it on R.E.M.’s songs],” Funk shares. “That was sort of our gateway into it.”
“There’s also bands like Belle and Sebastian,” Meloy adds. “It’s just like, everybody grab whatever instrument you have laying around and let’s give it a shot. There was a DIY [approach of], you don’t really have to be a virtuoso at this instrument to make songs with it. That was sort of the guiding principle, too.”
Of course, accordion, pedal steel, lap steel, banjo, and the like are hardly uncommon in country and folk settings, but were in the evolving 2000s indie-folk scene, which was competing (and still is) with a hip-hop and pop zeitgeist for the ears of a youthful audience. Other indie artists like Neutral Milk Hotel and Sufjan Stevens were also a bit ahead of the Decemberists, with Neutral Milk Hotel’s use of flugelhorn and musical saw on 1998’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and Stevens’ generously broad mixture of folk instruments on his 2000 debut A Sun Came. However, along with those bands, the Decemberists rose to more popular visibility and influence circa 2005.
Colin Meloy's Gear
Frontman Colin Meloy identifies more as a songwriter than a guitarist, and focuses on storytelling through his songs.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/tinnitus photography
Guitars
- Gibson J-200 Montana Gold
- Gibson J-45 True Vintage
- Goya nylon-string
- Andrew Mowry bouzouki
- Two Guild F-512 12-strings (one is tuned down a half step)
- Reverend Buckshot
- Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins
- Effects
- MXR Dyna Comp (modified with a 1980 CA3080E chip)
- ZVEX Box of Rock
- EHX Oceans 11
- Two Boss DD-3 Digital Delays
Amps
- Phoenix Audio DRS-Q4 MkII preamp (for acoustics)
- Carr Viceroy amp (for electrics)
- Orange OR50 head through a 2x12 cabinet (for electrics)
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario Light Acoustic (.012–.053)
- D’Addario Medium Wound 3rd Electric (.011–.049)
- Tortex .73 mm picks
- Golden Gate thumbpicks
❦
“Can you talk about your passion for guitar? That’s to the both of you,” I quiz Meloy and Funk halfway through the interview.
Meloy pauses, smiling. (At this point, he’s already confessed that he identifies more as a songwriter than a guitarist.) “Funk, would you like to talk about your passion for guitar?” he deflects, wryly.
“I think I was just saying I don’t have much left,” laughs Funk. “It’s just endless with electric guitar, with combinations of amps and pedals and the revival, or the beginnings of, boutique pedal building. I mean, it’s kind of insane. I’ve kind of put a moratorium on buying pedals, but it’s always fun just to see what people are building and that people are still pushing it. I’m not really attracted to people building 17-string guitars or anything like that, but I’m passionate about the possibilities of making the guitar sound less and less like a guitar.
“I religiously watch Rig Rundowns,” he continues. “I literally watch them every night. I’m just fascinated with how people are doing stage setups. I love it. I’m really fascinated with all the metal players or the heavier players; it seems like everybody’s using Fractal systems now, but even that’s interesting to me. I’ll never do it. But I think that’s cool.”
❦
Chris Funk's Gear
Multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk has contributed a wide variety of instruments to the Decemberists’ recordings over the years, and lately, has felt a bit more detached from the guitar. He still, however, obsessively watches Rig Rundowns.
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Guitars
- Weber Yellowstone Octave Mandolin
- Deering John Hartford Banjo
- Reverend Club King 290
- Gibson ES-390
- Gibson Chris Cornell Signature ES-335
- Eastwood Messenger
- Reverend Airwave 12-string
- Fylde Falstaff acoustic
- Epiphone Elitist ES-335
- Sho-Bud E9 pedal steel
Amp
- Supro 1695T Black Magick 1x12 combo (pedal steel)
- Two early Benson Monarch amps with Tall Bird reverbs
- Benson 1x12 cabs
Effects
For pedal steel:
- Boss FV-500 volume pedal
- Malekko Spring Chicken reverb
For electrics:
- Tuner
- Xotic AC Booster
- Keeley Dark Side
- Boss MT-2 Metal Zone
- Third Man Mantic Flex
- Boss SY-1 Guitar Synthesizer
- Strymon TimeLine
- Radial Twin-City ABY amp switcher
For acoustics:
- Fishman Aura Spectrum DI preamp
- Voodoo Lab Amp Selector
- Radial DIs
Modular Synth Rig:
- Busy Circuits Pamela’s Workout Master Clock
- Mutable Instruments Plaits
- Mutable Instruments Rings
- Knobula Poly Cinematic
- Strymon Magneto
- Instruo Arbhar
- Make Noise Rosie
Strings
- D’Addario Light Acoustic Guitar Strings (.012–.053)
- D’Addario Medium Wound 3rd Electric Guitar Strings (.011–.049)
Meloy and Funk were in their mid and late 20s, respectively, when they founded the Decemberists, and spent the following years of youthful adulthood developing a deeper friendship. When Meloy comments modestly on his guitar skills, Funk chimes in, “I think you’re undercutting your guitar playing. Colin’s a really great guitar player.”
“I learned a lot about guitar from Funk,” Meloy obliges. “I feel like when I started the Decemberists, I was afraid of electric guitar to a certain degree, and was much more comfortable with acoustic guitar. Funk has sort of pushed me in the direction of experimenting with guitar tones and pedals and setups and stuff like that. [I have gone] in that direction a little bit … not necessarily kicking and screaming, but just like, so intimidated by it. [He’s helped me to] open up to some ideas and approaches I don’t think I would’ve had before.”
That appreciation is mutual, as Funk shares his own perspective on what they’ve learned from one another over the years: “Colin’s always been pretty bold with some ideas that one might not do when they’ve entered a period of recording their second record on a major label—making Hazards of Love, which is a 45-minute folk-rock opera, if you will. So my takeaway is that the art comes first and it’s not always trying to find a single—it’s just being brave, to write from the heart.”
YouTube It
With Meloy on a Guild 12-string and Funk on a Reverend semi-hollowbody, the Decemberists rock their way through their 12-minute narrative folk-prog composition “The Island,” from 2006’s The Crane Wife.
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“I’m a fan of the riff,” says Jerry Cantrell. “I’m always collecting ideas, and you never know when they’re going to come, or what they’re going to turn into
Over the better part of an hour, only a couple of points of discussion seem to stoke his ire. One would be ’90s-era culture writers who felt compelled to brand a wide range of interesting bands from the same city (Seattle) with the same hollow tag (grunge). “It’s just a fucking label,” he says. “But I get it. You gotta have a fucking descriptor.” (When he gets miffed, or especially enthusiastic, Cantrell’s F-bombs can progress from steady punctuation to military fusillade.)
Another pet peeve: Those who seem bewildered by the fact that his solo work often evokes Alice in Chains. “It always trips me out,” he says, “when I hear comments or get questions all the time, like, ‘Well, this sounds like Alice.’ Well, what do you think it was going to sound like? I’m the guitar player and the songwriter of Alice. That’s what I do. Do you want me to not be myself? It’s just a bizarre, bizarre thing.” A big laugh follows.
“I’m always collecting ideas, and you never know when they’re going to come, or what they’re going to turn into. I look at it like depositing money in a bank.”
Cantrell, 58, has a right to feel irked by such exchanges. After all, he and the classic Alice lineup of vocalist Layne Staley, bassist Mike Starr, and drummer Sean Kinney invented a mesmeric, instantly identifiable sound that continues to stand alone in heavy music. On paper, the Alice formula doesn’t indicate multi-platinum success outright: off-kilter vocal harmonies shared between Staley and Cantrell, which can call to mind arcane American folk music or the classical avant-garde; parts written in odd time; lyrics about the most wrenching depths of drug addiction, a black cloud that followed the band throughout its ascent and tragically claimed Staley’s life in 2002 and Starr’s in 2011.
But Cantrell and Alice were also dedicated students of hard-rock history, who, along with their Seattle peers Soundgarden, helped to reinvent chart-topping metal for the alternative-rock era. To be sure, the guitarist ranks among the great riff maestros, and his solos, whether all-out wailing or comprised of a few bluesy bends, always had weight and meaning within the context of the song. And with all due respect to Extreme, no other hard-rock act explored acoustic music with more brilliant results.
Boasting nine tracks and coproduced by Cantrell and Joe Barresi, I Want Blood keeps the guitarist’s expert riffs and lyrical solos front and center.
On their masterpiece, the 1992 album Dirt, Alice in Chains managed to take Black Sabbath’s template for molten riffs into stranger, more artful, and more desperate territory, yet they also crafted tracks chock-full of hooks. A seamless meld of pop moves and bone-crushing heaviness is something of a holy grail for hard-rock songwriters and producers, and Dirt nabs it. Think of tracks like “Them Bones,” with its 7/8 intro riff and aslant vocal-harmony verses that resolve into a punchy, satisfying chorus—among the pithiest assessments of mortality in rock ’n’ roll. Or “Rooster,” an homage to Cantrell’s Vietnam-veteran father, with its left-field R&B harmonies and molasses-drip tempo. Somehow, these are songs that can rattle around in your brain throughout entire road trips or workdays; as of this writing, Dirt has sold five-million copies in the U.S.
“Let the players find their songs, and the songs find their players.”
Cantrell’s new album, I Want Blood, is his fourth solo release, and it’s a strong argument that he should continue to sound like himself and his legacy. Coproduced by Cantrell and hard-rock studio wizard Joe Barresi, its nine tracks tap into the Alice in Chains aesthetic in a way that will hit a sweet spot for longtime fans. As on the albums that Alice has released since Staley’s passing, with vocalist William DuVall, that indefinable sense of unease, that smoky ambiance of dread, isn’t so enveloping. But Cantrell’s most crucial gifts—the riff science, the knack for hooks, the belief that solos should be lyrical, musical, singable—are front and center, and razor-sharp.
What’s more, he’s recruited fellow hard-rock royalty to fulfill this vision. In addition to Barresi, whose credits comprise Kyuss, Melvins, Tool, QotSA and many, many others, the album’s personnel includes bassists Robert Trujillo and Duff McKagan, and drummers Mike Bordin (Faith No More) and Gil Sharone (Marilyn Manson, the Dillinger Escape Plan).
Through Alice in Chains’ rise in the early ’90s to recent years, Cantrell’s hard-rock presence has remained unshakeable. Here, he strikes a timeless rock 'n' roll pose.
Photo by Jordi Vidal/PhotoFuss
I Want Blood is a ripper. “Vilified” couples a chunky metal riff with wah and talk-box accents and a wandering, Eastern-tinged melody; “Off the Rails” matches a line à la John Carpenter’s Halloween score with a groove-metal thrust, before a radio-ready chorus kicks in. Ditto the chorus of “Let It Lie,” whose verse riff is pure Sabbath bliss. The earworm title track is the stuff music-sync-licensing dreams are made of. When he dials the tempo back toward ballad territory, as on “Echoes of Laughter,” “Afterglow,” or “It Comes,” Cantrell’s instinct for songcraft seems to get even stronger. As with Alice’s best LPs, I Want Blood stays with you and grows on you until it’s in steady rotation.
So what of that songcraft? It’s been over three decades since Cantrell debuted on record, and he’s still mining heavy gold. What’s the strategy, and what’s the secret? Does Cantrell’s work get harder or easier as he edges toward 60? “There’s a duality to it,” he says. “So in one way, I can answer that it’s pretty easy for me to make music. And then also, it’s fucking incredibly difficult to make something good. It can be both.”
He details the three-part work cycle that has defined his adult life: “There’s the demo process of writing. There’s the preproduction and actual recording of a record. And then there’s the period where you go out and tour it, along with all your other material, in a set. During that last third of the process, I’m really not writing, but through all the phases I’m always collecting riffs.” He’s also continually listening to great music, and allowing it to seep in. In the previous week, Cantrell says, he’d “rocked a bunch of Bad Company, UFO, AC/DC, some Maiden, some Hank Williams, some Ernest Tubb, some ‘Jungle Boogie.’”
Jerry Cantrell's Gear
This photo, taken from underneath the stage, shows Cantrell in his element, performing with Alice in Chains at Lollapalooza in the early ’90s.
Photo by Ken Settle
Guitars
- G&L “Blue Dress” Rampage
- G&L “No War” Rampage
- Gibson “D Trip” Les Paul Custom
- Gibson Les Paul Junior
- Gibson Flying V
- G&L ASAT
Amps
- Bogner Fish preamp
- Friedman JJ-100 signature head
- Snorkeler (Bogner-modded Marshall JCM800)
Effects
- Dunlop Jerry Cantrell Firefly Cry Baby Wah
- MXR Jerry Cantrell Firefly Talk Box
- MXR EQ
- MXR EVH Flanger
- MXR Smart Gate
- MXR Timmy
- MXR Poly Blue Octave
- MXR Reverb
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Boss CE-5
- Boss DD-500
- Strymon Ola dBucket Chorus & Vibrato
Strings & Picks
- Dunlop strings
- Dunlop picks
“I’m a fan of the riff,” he adds. “I’m always collecting ideas, and you never know when they’re going to come, or what they’re going to turn into. I look at it like depositing money in a bank. Like if I’m in a dressing room somewhere and I’m just warming up, and I see [one of my bandmates] react to something that I’m playing—put it in the bank. If I have a superpower, it is being able to hear something that might be a cool thing to work up and develop into a full-on song.
“When I’m slugging out riffs and just jamming out, if it feels good to rock out and your head starts moving and your foot starts tapping and you got something good—you know. It’s got to hit on a primal level first, and satisfy in that way.”
Writing, then, is often the more cerebral duty of assembling the best of what Cantrell has accrued and documented. “Like Lego pieces,” he says. “That used to be one of my favorite toys when I was a kid—Legos. Building stuff, block by block.” But, Cantrell points out, the process can also be more straightforward; he’ll start with a single riff and attempt to build the song’s infrastructure out from there, “throwing options at it, and ideas,” he says.
Cantrell, pictured here at 27, has carried on his hard-rock legacy with confidence, defying those who question his support and continuation of Alice in Chains’ influential sound.
Photo by Ebet Roberts
“I don’t necessarily know where I’m going a lot of the time. I just know that I have an intention to get there, and I’ve been able to take that journey to completion and make some pretty decent albums and songs over the years. And so I have the confidence to know that I probably can do this again—if I just put my mind to it and go through the process and work my ass off in concert with a group of people who have the same thought process.”
“There should always be the threat that the train is going to come off the rails.”
Cantrell is most certainly a “band” guy. For I Want Blood, he decided to play through a bunch of the material with his famous friends in preproduction, rather than simply assigning them one or two songs to guest on: “Let the players find their songs, and the songs find their players,” as he puts it. “It might’ve been with a little bit of frustration, because they got day jobs in some pretty impressive bands.” Time wasn’t exactly plentiful, but he did get in some living-room jams and other sessions with Trujillo, Bordin, and McKagan that ensured each track had its best possible lineup. Fortunately, Cantrell’s coproducer, Barresi, is similarly averse to cutting corners. Cantrell describes him as “a long-haul trucker” who “doesn’t suffer fools.”
“I’m an architect who is also a builder. You know what I mean?” says the guitarist, alluding to the relentless, often tedious work of record-making.“There should always be the threat that the train is going to come off the rails,” he says. For both men, Cantrell explains, “When you’re done with the record is when you think you couldn’t have done it any better.” Or, as Barresi likes to say, “How do you know you’ve gone too far unless you’ve already been there?”
Barresi also has a kind of encyclopedic recall of rock sonics. “He’s a guy who knows where all the bodies are buried,” Cantrell says, “and any combo of stuff you want to achieve: ‘Like, you know that song in The Departed, the Stones tune where it sounds like the guitar is going through a Leslie?’ [“Let It Loose,” off Exile on Main Street.] ‘Yeah, I know that pedal, man. Let’s grab it.’ You give him a reference and he knows how to replicate it.”
“I love working with a lot of different colors,” Cantrell says. “So I’ll use any guitar or any amp or any pedal to get a certain sound, and that all comes with experimentation. But it always starts with the basics.”
“When you’re done with the record is when you think you couldn’t have done it any better.”
If you’re a faithful reader of Premier Guitar, you may already know what that means: two mid-’80s G&L Rampages and the Les Paul Custom that Cantrell relied on to write his 2002 solo album Degradation Trip (the instrument with the custom blowtorch finish job). In amps, his go-to was the Bogner Fish preamp that he immortalized in Alice in Chains, in addition to his Friedman JJ-100 signature head. Cantrell also mentions the Bogner-modded Marshall sound he’s known for—aka the fabled Snorkeler—alongside tones from Orange and Laney. Among the guitars that made the cut: a butterscotch Les Paul Junior that was a gift from Billie Joe Armstrong a couple years back. When asked about effects, picks, and strings, Cantrell responds that he’s “a Dunlop guy”—which includes his MXR Jerry Cantrell Firefly Talk Box and Dunlop signature Cry Baby wah pedals.
YouTube It
Live at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in 2021, Jerry Cantrell testifies to his status as one of the most iconic guitarists in hard-rock history.
Cantrell is a fount of anecdotes, and talking guitar is a great way to hear some of them. He first saw the Rampage onstage in a club, after moving from Washington to Dallas, Texas, in the mid-’80s. Later, he began jamming with some guys who played Rampages, and picked up a job at a music shop that their father managed. The shop was a G&L dealer, so Cantrell paid for his instruments in part by working there. The Rampage, he adds, “just felt right.”
“The guy who built the necks and bodies that Eddie used to build his guitars was right in my backyard.”
“You gotta give a lot of credit to Eddie Van Halen,” he adds. “[The Rampage] was basically Leo Fender’s answer to Frankenstein, to the Charvel/Jackson model. One tremolo, one knob, one humbucker; that’s it. No-nonsense, just a meat-and-potatoes rock ’n’ roll guitar.”
A few years before the Rampage—Cantrell pinpoints 1979, because Van Halen II was out—he obtained a neck that was originally intended for EVH, and used it on a Strat he built himself in woodshop. The neck was payment from Boogie Bodies, the legendary guitar-parts manufacturer where Lynn Ellsworth and Jim Warmoth laid the foundation for the Superstrat era. “That shop was in Puyallup, Washington,” Cantrell says, “and I lived in Spanaway, which was right next door.The guy who built the necks and bodies that Eddie used to build his guitars was right in my backyard.”
Cantrell was barely in his teens when he got a gig helping out around the shop, and earned a “beautiful bird’s-eye maple neck” that didn’t make it to Eddie because it had a small divot in the 3rd fret. Cantrell recalls today that his duties included sweeping up sawdust. Then, as now, it was all about the work.