The Listomania I make the lists, you shoot them down. Quid Pro Quo.

123. The Decemberists – The Engine Driver

If you couldn't tell from the 600 or so words I post on this blog a day, I consider myself a writer. Enough so, in fact, that I hope more people are reading this for my writing than anything else, the list, the music, the time waster. There are very few songs in existence that champion the writer, not the songwriter but the author. Well, scratch that. Very few good songs in existence, that aren't whiny, that wouldn't wear a cardigan with over-sized buttons if it was a 22-year-old.

This song would only wear a warm sweater and glasses, and that's good enough for me. The Decemberists have been making intelligent, literate indie-pop since 2000, but hit their creative peak (thus far, they could go anywhere, up or all the way down from here) with 2005's Picaresque, a baroque and sprawling set of finely crafted melodic chamber pop. The album has more mandolin than R.E.M.'s whole catalogue, if that helps you put it in perspective. Not nearly as influenced as their most recent work by prog tendencies and the ever-fatal draw of the concept album, Picaresque maintains a strong and evident connection to grounded, simple-structure verse/chorus songsmithing. On "The Engine Driver" the band strikes their greatest solution of pop sensibility and bookish-weirdo charm.

Little additions to the song foreshadow later obsessions in the band's work, but here provide perfect accents to the forlorn-writer lyrics and calm of Colin Meloy's voice. The melodica lightly rapping in the background over a strummed resonator guitar, the sounds of thin metal combining into a wistful organic whole. The melody wafting over the New England sea shanty feel of an accordion, yanked from the Sea Captain's wharf and placed directly into The Decemberists lap. The quirks build on the pure songwriting, aiding rather than distracting, adding with sprazzatura rather than smacking of contemplation. And when the band swells upwards into "I am a writer/writer of fictions" it's impossible for me not to feel a twinge of happiness that a band so lovingly and earnestly crafted a song about what I love, and who I am. Quirky, literate, and often wearing sweaters - this is me in aural form.