One confused morning after, I listened to "Aeroplane" on the subway ride home, and arrived at my apartment to find the Decemberists' sophomore effort in my mailbox. Listening bleary-eyed, and feeling the need for emotional resolution, I was struck by a horrible sense of guilt. the Decemberists seemed less like a dream and more like reality, and I felt like I was cheating -- not on somebody I was ever actually in a relationship with, mind you, but on a goddamn album. And that felt even more stupid and unhealthy than the initial feeling of guilt. So it goes.

It left "Aeroplane" pleasantly unsullied, but it gave pathetically short shift to the Decemberists (and, by extension, anybody new in my life). After all, it is plumb unreasonable to criticize the Decemberists for not being Neutral Milk Hotel, or to evaluate one person on the basis of another. To be fair, "Her Majesty, the Decemberists" sounds considerably less like "Aeroplane" than its predecessor. More important, it's a really wonderful album, precisely on its own merits.

If Mangum seemed as if he was transmitting from the unconscious, like a surrealist engaging in automatic writing, then Meloy is a meticulous short-story writer. Both of these stances are consciously employed effects, to be sure, neither more nor less authentic than the other. There is a sense of haphazard inevitability to Mangum's music and a sense of careful ordering to Meloy's, and this subsequently affects the listener's level of engagement. Like an author dressing a scene with finely described props, the Decemberists' arrangements are pure suggestion. Where ambient theremins and "Aeroplane"-like crackles served "Castaways and Cutouts," organ drones, whispered strings, and all manners of bells populate "Her Majesty."

This in itself isn't much of an achievement. It's what is meant these days by the term "well-produced." Except that the extras all adhere to a gently macabre, very original aesthetic, structurally sketched by Meloy's lyrics and percussionist Rachel Blumberg's resolutely pre-rock rhythms. The latter are subtly inventive, prodding the music along with quiet insistence (such as the muted march of "The Gymnast, High Above the Ground"). The former are decidedly surreal, with more than a hint of Mangum ("Seraphim in seaweed swim where stick-limbed Myla lies"), but seem more actively written than pulled whole from a subconscious, more functional in the real world than describing a dream state.

Indeed, there are places where Meloy oversteps in describing the world, emphasizing antiquated language for its own sake ("pantaloons" and "dungarees" make appearances in "The Soldering Life"), or delves into plain cutesiness, such as the show-tuney (though endearing) "Chimbley Sweep." For this, Meloy and company might be dubbed "literate." They are, though not because they make smarty-pants allusions to Russian revolutionaries (their band name) and haunting authors ("Song for Myla Goldberg"), but because they are so self-aware. "Here's a plaintive melody/ A truncated symphony/ An ocean's garbled vomit on the shore," Meloy sets up, before delivering the punch line, shooting the listener unashamedly into glittering modernity: "Los Angeles, I'm yours."

This awareness might be taken for mannered restraint, and that is both what makes the record enjoyable and what might prevent it from becoming a revered document, à la "Aeroplane." "Her Majesty, the Decemberists" is not the key to a new and weirder life -- but then, not much is. For that matter, it doesn't try to be. "Aeroplane" is a high-stakes record. It works for some, and it could be considered one pretentious-ass slab o' music by others. It's hard to listen to without noticing its ambitions.

For those obsessed with (or possessed by) "Aeroplane" -- that is, for me -- "Her Majesty, the Decemberists" might well be a lesson in what to do afterward, the day-to-day life following an astonishing dream. Just as one might unconsciously attribute dream actions to real-life acquaintances, Colin Meloy and the Decemberists point backward to Jeff Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel. It is not wrong to expect things out of bands or albums, but it is dangerous -- falling in love with somebody who might be incapable of loving you back. But when they do, it's wonderful. Especially albums. Such love is unconditional, and doesn't go away.

Mangum's absence has only made "Aeroplane" that much more untouchable. The night I received "Her Majesty," I ventured back into Manhattan from Brooklyn, where I live. I took the long way back to the subway as I listened to it, detouring down St. Mark's Place. There, sitting at an outdoor cafe, was Neutral Milk Hotel's Julian Koster, smiling broadly and enjoying the late summer evening. I quickly pushed the headphones off my ears, stunned by the surreality of the moment and, again, with guilt. Of all the issues to be raised by pop music, guilt should not be one of them.

The simple moral is that not everything has to be high stakes. The oblique cleverness of "Los Angeles, I'm Yours" might be Meloy's writerly lesson in a nutshell. One imagines him walking quixotically through the sprawl, places and people transforming into "a city by the sea/ A gently company." "Its streets and boulevards/ Orphans and oligarchs," he sings. And if oligarchs, then why not singing saw players?

The Decemberists don't have to reshape my world, just as every girl I meet doesn't have to reshape my future. But my present? Fine. It's probably healthier to be transformative than transcendent, anyway. Real worlds are better than fantasies; real bands are nicer than nonexistent ones. The Decemberists will tour again soon.

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