The Decemberists: Florasongs EP

For all of the Decemberists’ considerable instincts as performers, they've never been a band to leave listeners wanting more. Save for 2011’s uncharacteristically concise The King Is Dead, even their best albums often seemed like too much of a good thing, and most have felt longer than their runtimes—much, much longer in the case of 2009’s proggy endurance test The Hazards of Love, a cautionary tale about the overreach ambitious artists are capable of when left unchecked. Like The King Is Dead before it, this year’s What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World played like a correction to that record, a continued dialing back of the band’s more audacious tendencies, but it was overstuffed in its own right, and with no musical or conceptual themes binding its 14 songs, it begged for some focus. Terrible World was the first Decemberists album that didn’t have the vision to justify its bloat.

Casual fans won’t be overcome with excitement upon learning the band’s Florasongs EP was culled from leftovers from the Terrible World sessions. Even for Decemberists diehards, an addendum to the band’s most forgettable album probably wasn’t high on the wish list, and the EP reaffirms what Terrible World already made clear: that Colin Meloy brought an abundance of songs to these sessions, but not much in the way of a big picture. Unlike its full-length counterpart, though, Florasongs has brevity working in its favor. These days, the Decemberists sound best in small doses, and at just five songs and 19 minutes long, the EP goes down easier than its predecessor.

If the EP has a unifying thread, it’s the band’s wide-eyed fascination with '80s college rock. Filled with ringing guitars and taut melodies, "Why Would I Now?" moves with the swift efficiency of Elvis Costello’s King of America-era output. A shanty caressed with accordions, "Riverswim" plays like it was traced over the Pogues’ "Dirty Old Town". And though Decemberists have so fully internalized R.E.M.’s playbook by now that they could probably turn around a Lifes Rich Pageant tribute album on two days’ notice, "The Harrowed and the Haunted" is one of their most elegant homages, building to the same lovely, slow reveal as R.E.M.’s dreamiest numbers. Even the Communist Russia setting of "Fits & Starts", the EP’s lone rocker, feels like a throwback to the Reagan era in its own way. "I was watching on the apparat/ Some comely little apparatchik felled," Meloy sings over pounding pianos. As rowdy party songs go, it’s hardly AC/DC, but it’s about as close as he’ll get.

As The King Is Dead proved, there’s still some pleasure in hearing a relatively reigned-in Decemberists. But while the band wears restraint well, Florasongs never overcomes the sense that they’re selling themselves short, penning good-enough songs when they used to shoot for grand, great ones. This is a band that once thrived on risks. The Crane Wife shouldn’t have worked but it did. The Hazards of Love shouldn’t have worked and, by and large, it didn’t, and ever since they've been playing it safe. After five years of bowling with bumpers, maybe it’s time for them to start taking chances once again.