Since their debut in 2001 with the self-released 5 Songs EP, Portland, Oregon’s The Decemberists have built themselves a catalogue of hyper-literate folk songs, bombastic anthems, wistful Americana tunes, tranquil love songs, rock opera movements and joking ditties—basically whatever kind of music they want—and their fans have followed them all the way. Behind frontman and lead vocalist Colin Meloy, the band has come to be synonymous with the indie rock movement of the early aughts. After a multi-year hiatus, The Decemberists continue to push themselves to new heights, releasing this year’s What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, an eclectic, sprawling collection of tracks that follows up and wholly contrasts the group’s succinct 2011 effort The King is Dead. Their newest release, Florasongs EP, is made up of unreleased recordings from the recent album’s sessions.
Chris Funk has been playing guitar (among many other instruments) for The Decemberists from the beginning, adding his Midwest roots to the Pacific Northwestern outfit. An admitted fan of punk rock, Funk complements Meloy’s acoustic demeanor with an edge that has led to the band’s signature sound that, he says, has never really fit the mold. Here Funk discusses the refreshing aspects of the most recent recording sessions, why every Decemberists record is different and which album he enjoyed recording the least.
How’s the touring been this year—any surprises?
Our concert sold out in Winnipeg, Canada—that was surprising.
Let’s talk about the recent album and the upcoming EP. What’s the usual process that you guys go through to start out an album? Is there a set routine at this point, or is it always kind of different?
It’s been different with every record, honestly. This one was to show up with no overarching theme. A lot of our albums have overarching themes, I think for us to sort of wrap our head around them—and for Colin [Meloy], in the beginning, to wrap his head around the genesis and songwriting of the music, and then for us as a band to augment it and sort of focus what we’re going to play. For example, The King is Dead was sort of our idea of making an Americana record, and then The Hazards of Love being more of a rock opera record. This time we just booked studio time and didn’t talk about it that much until we were in there making the music. Usually there’s a lot of chatter before we go in—“How’s this gonna be?” or “How is this album gonna sound?” Usually Colin or myself will demo something and put in sounds just to have a talking point, but we didn’t do that this time, which is really nice.
With the other albums, are there songs written going in to it, especially on the more concept driven albums like The Hazards of Love ?
Sure. I don’t mean to say that Colin just showed up [for this album] and we jammed and then he wrote songs—the structures were made, and in some cases he already had some ideas of guitar lines or some suggestions—but it wasn’t as much as previously. With The Hazards of Love, it was a maze putting that thing together, so that was well written in some regards before going in to the studio. It kind of reminds me of the old days, like on Picaresque where we just showed up and I’d bring instruments, like I’d try out a banjo or try this and try that and we’ll see how it layers in. I don’t want to say it is, but to me it’s like our greatest hits type of thing, because I can point to every record in our career and say, “Oh that kind of comes from or was informed by this record” or “That one’s informed from that record.” It’s kind of strange—it arises some very strange sounds when I break it down album for album. Sometimes we’re a folk band, sometimes we’re a hard rock band, sometimes we’re British folk and sometimes we’re American folk, or whatever. It’s like we’re all over the map, and there’s all types of genre selections.
It took a year and a half to do the record. Not every day—it was a year and a half by design, because we would come in and work and then split after four days and not reconvene until months later. That was the difference with this record—we didn’t block out this huge intense part around making the album. We’d just show up every so often, which I really enjoyed, because I feel like you can lose perspective at times. At least I do.
I’m interested as to why certain songs don’t make it on to albums, and why others are left for later projects, like the EP that you have coming out. What goes into that decision?
You don’t know what a song is going to sound like until you put it up and get it recorded and then hear it coming up over the hi-fi, or whatever you want to call it. Overall I think that an album just captures a moment in time, and there are some albums there are some songs that looking back I don’t think should have been released on that album.
Any ones in particular?
No [laughs]. I’m not gonna reveal that. But I think that the band can get excited about songs—Colin can get excited about songs or any combination of people, and then we have Tucker, who’s our producer, who’s involved in it as well. I think you start to see the shape of an album and how it makes sense, and we still think of these things—which are arcane at this point—but we still think of things about how you rule things out in terms of an album, and how the identity sits. But I think it helps us focus on what the identity of that album should be, and what those songs are. And there was a debate for a while about if we should make a double album, or leave it as it is, but everybody makes an iTunes playlist and then exports it and that’s how they listen to it. I think that you have a beginning and an end, and what goes in between is based on the pace of songs.
So yeah, I’d say it’s a democratic process that’s just putting the album up and every day you listen to it, and every day it feels different. Some days there’s a band you listened to or whatever and it’s like, “I love this album today!” And then other days you hear it and you’re like, “I don’t want to hear this ever again.” And then you hear it again and say, “That’s an amazing record” [laughs]. But there’s no distinct methodology that I’ve come across yet.
I assume that Colin brings in most of the songs. Is there a lot of adding to that in the studios, with everyone throwing in their own part?
Oh yeah, absolutely. There’s a couple on this record where, for lack of a better term the lead guitar player had some ideas and I was like, “Go for it, just play it,” and that’s the fun part of collaborating and being able to switch around and play different instruments. It’s like sharing the experience, you know? So sometimes [Colin] had stuff totally hammered out, sometimes not. More not on this one though, for sure.
So there’s a song, “Fits and Starts,” on this new EP, and it’s maybe the most punk I’ve ever heard you guys. Was it fun to let loose a little bit on that one?
Yeah, there are a few of us in the band that grew up listening to punk or garage or whatever you want to call it.
Which bands?
Well, me personally, I listened to a lot of Chicago punk rock music, and, you know, the classic British punk stuff, and a lot of what I would call skate rock bands from the ‘80s—like Agent Orange or something like JFA. But in Chicago I listened to Naked Raygun, Effigies, Rights for the Accused, bands like that were around. But just playing guitar, that is so fun to do if you don’t do it that often and to play heavier music. And you see that with artists who play a lot of heavier music too; you’ll see some of them sneak off and play something maybe a little more acoustic from time to time. It’s just fun to sort of get on the other side of the fence. I feel like maybe Hazards of Love was the closest we’ve come to making something that was more sonically blown-out, guitar-driven music, which was really fun to do as a guitar player. It was different. Whereas the Decemberists can be very cerebral—or at least we’ve been accused of that—we wanted to be visceral as well.
All of your albums are very different, as you’ve mentioned. Do you guys discuss beforehand where you want to go with the next album?
Yeah. Again, this album was just kind of song to song. That’s why I call it a greatest hits album, in the way that it’s the greatest hits of production or instrumentation I guess. It’s very much a dissimilar sound now, I can feel it and hear it. I feel like we’ve taken what we considered liberty, just sort of pushing our boundaries as a band, and I think it sounds like it recaps a lot of stuff, from ‘80s college rock to heavy guitar songs to folk ballads—Nick Drake kind of material that’s more in the British canon of literature—more ‘70s rock. And then there’s the Americana stuff playing here and there, so it was honestly refreshing. It’s fun to go in and say, “Here’s this focal point, how do we get there?” as a quasi musicologist. It’s also fun just go in and play.
Speaking of that, do you have a favorite album so far, one that was most fun to record?
Out of the Decemberists catalogue? Well honestly the least fun to record was Hazards of Love. It’s my favorite record now.
Was it just very difficult?
It was. You know, people were having babies at the time and there was very little sleep going on, and we booked like seven weeks in a row in the studio in the summer time in Oregon. And summertime in Oregon is like golden time because it rains here so much, so we were feeling kind of locked away in the studio. There were just a couple moments of like, “how is this all making sense?” or “where is this going?” or “what’s happening?” or “what are people going to think of this fucking thing?” [laughs]. But now it makes total sense, and it’s a joy to play the music.
Picaresque was a really fun record to make. That was the first time we were given what I’ll call a real recording budget and felt like rock stars. We worked with Chris Walla, formerly of Death Cab, and we did it in a church in North Portland here, so it was like a really loose recording feeling. It was really fun. I remember I finally had some money and I bought a banjo, so I just showed up with a banjo and that was introduced into the group. It was all a good period of Decemberists songwriting going on there.
And you’ve produced albums for other artists—how is that process different than making an album yourself or with your band?
Most people, when they come in, they want a producer that can give them some guidance. So as opposed to a straight-up engineer, you’re offering guidance and you’re helping them. You’re sort of shepherding them in their experience of making that album, from budgets to song quality to sometimes even helping people find a label that’s going to help them out and help the album along. Playing with the Decemberists, we have a producer, Tucker Martin, who’s a very vocal and competent producer and engineer. Colin has strong vision—we all have ideas—so it’s obviously a collaborative effort in that way.
How do you feel you’ve evolved as musicians or as songwriters or even as people in the last 15 years or so? Do you feel like a different band?
Yeah, definitely. I think when we started off we identified as a Pacific Northwest indie rock band, which we didn’t look or sound like. It’s kind of hard to imagine music without banjos and accordions and the acoustic guitars now—they’re kind of everywhere. But back then it really wasn’t [like that]. It was all electric guitars and vocals still—it was all Sleater-Kinney and Quasi. There were these great bands, but the sound was very much different from punk music, you know? Historically, and twisted through their own lens. Pavement or something like that, that was college rock at the time. We were a small acoustic band, and I played pedal steel on a couple of songs. I hardly played the electric guitar. Colin never played the electric guitar at all. Nate pretty much just played the upright bass, almost the entire time, Jenny played way more accordion. So we’ve evolved over the years into not having to say we’re this weird folky band or pretend to be indie rock or whatever. It’s funny that in the press they talk about folk music so much, and I think that’s because Colin has talked about folk music so much on the influence on his writing. There’s this sort of feel that we’re this folk band, but we’re also a band that draws a lot of people to concerts now and gets played on modern rock radio, so I don’t know how we’ve evolved. We kind of have our own little weird world, and people have come along for the ride, thankfully. I think that the band has given us all the liberty that we get to make a living in music, and we hear ourselves as musicians and as writers. I guess we’ve evolved as people from dishwashers and former book store clerks into competent musicians and artists. Most of the time. [Laughs]
