The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
NME.COM feature on The Decemberists - The Crane Wife album including album review, artwork, tracks, listen now, tour dates, discography and more.
Release date: 03 October 2006
Tracklisting click track to read more
- The Crane Wife 3
- The Island
- Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
- O Valencia!
- The Perfect Crime #2
- When the War Came
- Shankill Butchers
- Summersong
- The Crane Wife 1 & 2
- Sons & Daughters
- Culling Of The Fold
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The Decemberists - The Crane Wife YouTube Videos
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The Decemberists - The Crane Wife: Wikipedia Album Entry
The Crane Wife is an album by The Decemberists, released in 2006. It was produced by Tucker Martine and Chris Walla, and is the band's first album on the Capitol Records label. The album was inspired by a Japanese folk tale, and centers on two song cycles, The Crane Wife and The Island, the latter of which was inspired by William Shakespeare's The Tempest. National Public Radio listeners voted The Crane Wife the best album of 2006.
The album cover was made by Portland artist Carson Ellis, long-time girlfriend (and now wife) of Colin Meloy, who has created artwork for each of their albums.
The Crane Wife is an old Japanese tale. While there are many variations of the tale, a common version is that a poor man finds an injured crane on his doorstep (or outside with an arrow in it), takes it in and nurses it back to health. After he releases the crane, a woman appears at his doorstep with whom he falls in love and marries. Because they need money, his wife offers to weave wondrous clothes out of silk that they can sell at the market, but only if he agrees never to watch her making them. They begin to sell them and live a comfortable life, but he soon makes her weave them more and more. Oblivious to his wife's diminishing health, his greed increases. He eventually peeks in to see what she is doing to make the silk she weaves so desirable. He is shocked to discover that at the loom is a crane plucking feathers from her own body and weaving them into the loom. The crane, seeing him, flies away and never returns.
Band leader Colin Meloy found a version of this story and decided to write music based on it.
In a January 2007 interview given on the NPR show Fresh Air, Colin Meloy gave this synopsis of the story:
"It's a story about a peasant in rural Japan who finds a wounded crane on an evening walk; there's an arrow in its wing. He revives the crane and the crane flies away. A couple days later, a mysterious woman shows up at his door and he takes her in. Eventually they fall in love and get married. But they're very poor, so she suggests that she start weaving this cloth which he can in turn sell at the market—the condition being that when she's weaving it, she has to do it behind closed doors and he can't look in. So this goes on for a while and they actually become kind of wealthy. But eventually, his curiosity gets the best of him and he looks in at her while she's weaving and it turns out that she's a crane and she's been pulling feathers from her wings and putting it into the cloth, which is what makes it so beautiful. But him having seen her breaks the spell, and she turns back into a crane and flies away. That's the end."
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The Decemberists - The Crane Wife Lyrics
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife 3 Lyrics
And under the boughs unbowed
All clothed in the snowy shroud
She had no heart so hardened
All under the boughs unbowed
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife 1 and 2 Lyrics
It was a cold night
And the snow lay low
I pulled my coat tight
Against the falling down
The Decemberists - Summersong Lyrics
Ramblin', where to begin
I taste the summer on your peppery skin
Been saved the warmer the waves
I felt a slip into a watery grave
The Decemberists - Shankhill Butchers Lyrics
The Shankill Butchers ride tonight
You better shut your windows tight
They're sharpening their cleavers and their knives
And taking all their whiskey by the pint
The Decemberists - When The War Came Lyrics
With all the grain of Babylon
To cultivate, to make us strong
And hidden here behind the walls
Are shoulders wide and timber on
The Decemberists - The Perfect Crime #2 Lyrics
Sing news with passion of the pistol
Sing news of the warning by the whistle
A night so dark in the waning
A dawn obscured by slight sky raining
The Decemberists - O Valencia! Lyrics
You belong to the gang and you say you can't break away
But I'm here with my hands on my heart
And our families can't agree, I'm your brother's sworn enemy
But I'll shout out my love to the stars
The Decemberists - Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) Lyrics
Heart-carved tree trunk, Yankee bayonet
A sweetheart left behind
Far from the hills of the sea-swelled Carolinas
That's where my true love lies
More The Decemberists - Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) Lyrics
The Decemberists - The Island-Come & See/The Landlordâs Daughter/Youâll Not Feel The Drowning Lyrics
There's an island hidden in the sound
Lapping currents lay your boat to ground
Affix your barb and bayonet, the curlews carve their Arabesques
And sorrow fills the silence all around, you come and see
The Decemberists - Sons and Daughters Lyrics
When we arrive, sons and daughters
We
We
We
