We All Raise Our Voices to the Air (Live Songs 04.11-08.11)

This epic-length live concert recording, taken from 12 different shows and mixed to sound like one, stands as a summary of The Decemberists\' achievements as of 2012, when they\'re said to be taking a sabbatical. It features songs from throughout their career, proving again that Colin Meloy\'s unusual lyrical approach is matched by an unerring sense of melody, no matter how pretentious the surroundings become. The straightforward, crystalline beauty of \"Leslie Ann Levine\" (from the band\'s debut album, *Castaways and Cutouts*) is forever enduring. The country- to R.E.M.-influenced material (\"Calamity Song,\" \"Rise to Me,\" \"Rox in the Box,\" \"All Arise!,\" \"June Hymn,\" \"This Is Why We Fight\" \"Down by the Water\") from 2011\'s excellent *The King Is Dead* resonates with energy far beyond the stripped-down acoustic approach. 2006\'s *The Crane Wife* has its title cut\'s three parts finally put together into one 16-minute rock opera. For laughs, Meloy presents a snippet of the \"the very worst song I ever wrote in my entire life\" (\"Dracula\'s Daughter\") before slipping into the much better \"O Valencia!\"

This 2xCD collection, the Decemberists' first live full-length in their decade-plus career, sets all their heady concepts, genre nods, and oddball experiments side by side.

Around the time of 2009’s surprisingly doom-y concept record The Hazards Of Love, a weird word started popping up in Decemberists’ reviews: metal. Given the group’s buttoned-down, librarian-folk façade, suggesting that it was somehow capable of throwing down the hammer of the gods inspired incredulity. Really? This…

The Decemberists have always been a hard band to pigeon hole. Their earlier albums celebrated and recalled the great prog-rock bands of the seventies, but in the last few years they've been clearly enamored with the Appalachian sounds of antique American folk as exemplified by artists like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. The Decemberists' music has always been complex and it's easy to imagine how difficult it could be to recreate in a live setting. Lead singer and main songwriter, Colin Melloy - like Shane McGowan of the Pogues before him - writes extremely literary - if occasionally verbose - lyrics that the band mol...

Check out our album review of Artist's We All Raise Our Voices to the Air (Live Songs 04.11-08.11) on Rolling Stone.com.

Recorded while the band was on tour for their chart-topping album, The King Is Dead, We All Raise Our Voices to the Air captures the remarkably tight live performances of Portland indie band the Decemberists.

Reviewing a live album is an inherently difficult thing to do, because it goes without saying that anyone seeking out live recordings of a band is likely already a fan. And if you’re a fan, you’re probably going to have an idea of what the group sounds like already, and which songs you like, and

The Decemberists first live album, We All Raise Our Voices To The Air, is a 20-song retrospective after a decade together.