Decemberists' singer Colin Meloy discusses new songs and spring tour that's headed here

PITTSBURGH ― A deep dive into Joan of Arc's legacy led Colin Meloy to craft what would become a 19-minute prog-rock epic gracing The Decemberists' upcoming double album.

"As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again," the Decemberist's ninth studio album, follows a six-year recording hiatus for one of indie-rock's most literary and entertaining bands, which heads out on a tour this month hitting Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York, New England and cities westward.

"I like the expansiveness of it," Meloy said about the 13-track album due out June 14. "I think it really manages to encapsulate everything that we're kind of good at. It's not a single conceptualized piece. I feel it's a little bit of everything for everyone. It's got the big prog jam, my kind of folk-pop tunes, it's got more intimate songs about death and dying, which should probably satisfy just about everyone."

Meloy co-produced the album with Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket), drawing guest appearances from The Shins’ James Mercer and REM’s Mike Mills.

Radio and streaming sites debuted the horns-infused single "Burial Ground," with its super catchy, somewhat whimsical melody paired with Meloy's penchant for clever wordplay − rhyming "burial ground" with "merry go round" − and dark twists (the final line dropping an unexpected reference to contracting malaria.)

"The lyrical hook and the melody came to me in a dream," Meloy said in an April 12 phone interview. "It happens every once in a while, you'll dream a song. and you'll hear the melody and occasionally you'll be able to actually translate it once you're out of it. When you hear it in a dream invariably you think, 'Oh my God, this is the best song I've ever written ... It's sort of one of those songs that brings nations together.' Of course, when you sit down and actually play it, usually you're like, 'Nah, it's not that good.' This one, with that hook, was good enough. It felt like I could build a song around it, and so I did."

Another new one, the folky "William Fitzwilliam," pulls inspiration from Hilary Mantel's 'The Mirror and The Light," part of the author's Wolf Hall trilogy about the Court of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, which Meloy had been reading in March 2020 when the pandemic put the world in lockdown.

"And shortly after that, John Prine died and I was sort of reflecting a lot on John Prine and playing John Prine songs at home and I feel like those two worlds kind of collided, Hilary Mantel and John Prine," Meloy said.

The Decemberists' publicity firm, Grandstand HQ, boasts the new album is the Portland, Ore.-forged band's "most empathetic and accessible" yet, praising the "existential slog and capitalist vexation" of “The Reapers” and the "opiated delusion and jumbled jingoism" of “America Made Me.”

The tender “All I Want Is You,” said Meloy, "is just a very stripped down, honest, heart-on-its-sleeve love song."

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The track likely to cause the most buzz, especially if added to the 2024 concert setlist, is "Joan in The Garden," the 19-minute art-rock rave-up that surpasses the ambition of 2004's 18-minute, inspired-by-Irish mythology "The Tain."

"It's an idea I've been toying around with for a while, since at least 2017, when I read this book by Lidia Yuknavitch called 'The Book of Joan,' which is a very bizarre, sort of psychedelic absurdist take on the story of Joan of Arc," Meloy said. "And that led me on this trip of reading a bunch of books about Joan of Arc and just kind of diving headlong, immersing myself in the story of Joan of Arc. Just out of curiosity it invariably found its way into the idea of the song. And there was a lot of dead ends and failed attempts struggling with the idea of it. So, I think I finally landed on this version, and really wanted to focus mainly on that idea of visitation or revelation and that moment she has epochally in the garden. And how that could be seen as this hallucinatory, mental health, gender-bending stuff that's deep inside the story of Joan of Arc. It's why it speaks to us today. And I feel like I just want to distill that into a 19-minute song (laughs)."

Founded in 2000, when Meloy moved from Montana to Portland and met bassist Nate Query, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, and guitarist Chris Funk, The Decemberists’ permanent line-up fell into place with the arrival of drummer John Moen and the surprise jump to major label Capitol Records. Any ground-level fans' fears of the band becoming corporate sellouts were squashed by the critically lauded "The Crane Wife" and "The Hazards of Love" albums, followed by the band's first chart-topper "The King is Dead" and Grammy-nominated single “Down By The Water,” then 2015's "What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World," with a No. 1 Adult Alternative radio hit “Make You Better.”

Meloy's also become a New York Times bestselling author, whose Wildwood Chronicles currently are being made into an animated feature starring Carey Mulligan, Mahershela Ali, Angela Bassett and Tom Waits.

His songwriting writing process has remained the same.

"A lot typically comes out of exploring melodies and chords on a guitar and coming up with melody lines," Meloy said. "Then there'll be ideas and concepts floating out in the ether that end up getting applied and put into songs. The arrangement stuff always tends to happen later. I feel like with (new song) 'Oh No!' the horn section and the percussion were as much a part of the writing of that song; whereas the flute on "The Reapers" we kind of arrived at in the studio after we've been working on it a little bit and were like, 'You know what would really be great? A little sweet jazz flute.'"

Along with ace songwriting, the Decembeists are beloved for their theatrical live performances.

Let's just say a whale has shown up on stage for encores featuring "The Mariner's Revenge Song."

Meloy said, "All that stuff sort of develops spontaneously or organically though I'm sort of thinking of ways − I can't help it − of how do we represent the stuff on stage. But I feel the whale may be a little bit played out at this point. I'm kind of excited to play a concert in which a giant inflated whale doesn't come out on stage. But something spectacular and miraculous will certainly take its place."

Meloy's not shy about roaming out into the audience.

"That's kind of become a staple to our show. It's not so much oh-I-must-entertain-people, I think it just organically happens and makes the show more fun for us and makes it more dynamic and interesting and weirder if you take those chances each night and try to explore some sort of audience reaction."

There's always fun banter, too.

For at least a few of the Decemberists' more recent Pittsburgh concerts, Meloy regaled audiences with the tale of how the band's first Steel City gig was at the Quiet Storm coffeehouse, after which the band slept on the couch and floor of the owner's home.

"Do we tell that story every time?" Meloy said. "I guess if you go to multiple shows in any city you're bound to hear the same city-related story. I apologize for the repetition. Yeah, we played a coffee shop and slept on the floor of the barista's house. I don't know if it's that remarkable though. I don't know why we keep repeating it."

Decemberists tour dates:

April 30: Ulster Performing Arts Center, Kingston, NY.

May 2: Roadrunner, Boston.

May 3: Brooklyn Paramount Theater.

May 4: College Street Music Hall, New Haven.

May 6: History, Toronto.

May 7: Stage AE, Pittsburgh.

May 8: The Fillmore, Philadelphia.

May 10: The Anthem, Washington, D.C.

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and can be reached at stady@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Decemberists' frontman Colin Meloy talks new album & tour headed here