The Decemberists – Castaways and Cutouts

Review

You can almost smell the saltwater and candle wax seeping through Castaways and Cutouts, The Decemberists’ enchanting debut full-length. Colin Meloy and company arrive here like literary vagabonds, spinning tales of soldiers, sailors, and tragic dreamers as if plucked from a 19th-century novel washed up on shore. The album feels lived-in and windblown—folk rock dressed in sepia tones, wrapped around accordion sighs and the delicate hum of storytelling.

From the melancholic sweep of “Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect” to the maritime ache of “Leslie Anne Levine,” Meloy’s lyrics paint portraits more than they tell stories—each character rendered in tender, tragic hues. The band’s arrangements are gorgeously tactile: organs hum like ghosts, and guitars flicker like candlelight over old wood floors. There’s a rare sense of time travel in these songs, where the archaic and the modern meet in melancholy harmony.

Castaways and Cutouts isn’t just an album—it’s a gateway into The Decemberists’ strange and wondrous world, one where heartbreak and history waltz together under a dim lantern glow. It’s romantic, tragic, and endlessly human. - Eleanor