My musical tastes tend towards the young, loud and snotty, making my favorite new record all the more unusual. This is solidly nerd rock of a bespectacled band with English accents and funny rhymes like
The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle the Thistles undone.
I love the Decemberists' The Hazards of Love and all the elegance, wry humor and curiosity that it embodies. Listen to this record openly and in its entirety, as it tells an English folk-style tale in a succession of thematic variations. Savor its masterful arrangement of banjo, a children's choir, pedal steel, accordion, electric guitar power chords, and pipe organ. You will fall in love as I did.
