I agree that Illinois is still the high point of like that entire genre. Castaways And Cutouts isn’t far behind, but every time I listen to it I sort of cringe to think about where the Decemberists would end up. I keep planning to do more Sufjan, but stopped after Michigan, which was a dry run for Illinois anyway.

The last I ever heard of anyone bringing the Decemberists up in ANY context was a whopping 13 years ago, when they put out an album called The King Is Dead, which I did bother to hear and which had a couple of decent songs on it but was full of deliberate ripoff-fanboy R. E. M. guitar parts, some of which may actually have been Peter Buck. I remember Mike D saying it sounded like Colin Meloy trying to be John Cougar Mellencamp. After that? DEAD SILENCE–I think I may have mentioned my love for C&C in a few threads about old indie rock around here, but nobody has talked about any new albums they’ve put out since 2011 around here. And I haven’t seen any discussions of any new stuff anywhere else I look, either.

What I seem to recall happening is that they were sort of on a roll until 2009–they were certainly well regarded through Picaresque and The Crane Wife and were getting notices in mainstream publications by that point, and I only saw some skeptics re: the cutesiness issue, like Matt around here was pretty hard on them for being all affected, and Christgau singled out a lousy instance of Meloy misprounouncing the word “blackguard.” It was very clearly the big rock opera they did that blew the goodwill they had built up–the cutesiness overload spilled over into contempt for a lot of people and while I could name some good songs from the rock opera (“The Rake Song,” “The Wanting Comes In Waves”) but it’s pretty clear that nobody thought it was a genuine masterpiece like it was supposed to be, and then they kept trying to push it as their big deal, and people continued to not buy into it…and then they receded, exactly like Aqua Teen Hunger Force receded after that awful ATHF movie came out, and now both are early 00s relics that people have totally moved on from.

I never heard Fiery Furnaces.