Wine and Music: The Decemberists - As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again (2024)

This week we tackle the latest album of a band that's been blazing a trail through the music scene for 2 decades now. Combining boroque British folk, a prog rock structure, and Americana (blues, country, American folk) the band has been featured on the sitcoms THE OFFICE and PARKS AND REC and had their 2015 THE KING IS DEAD top the Billboard 200 upon release.

Yet somehow neither of us had listened to them until this latest album. And folks, it's bloody great.

Paired with some unique wines (to match the unique music!) including this one which can only be found at the below link:

DEAR NATIVE GRAPES HUDSON VALLEY HEIRLOOM GRAPE SERIES LE COLONEL (only 72 bottles made!)

Chapters

• 3:11 Our Respective Histories with the Album
• 13:41 Hints on the Wine Pairings
• 19:36 Brief Background on the Band
• 27:57 What Hooked Dave on the Band
• 32:36 What Worked for Both of Us
• 34:38 What did We Struggle With?
• 39:15 Our Fave Songs on the Album
• 52:38 Dave's Wine Pairings
• 1:02:04 Dallas' Wine Pairings
• 1:05:49 Wrap-Up!

Transcript

0:13

He's Dave and I'm Dallas and this is Ventertainment. We have opinions on just about everything. Sometimes those opinions are spot on. Sometimes they go down easier with a glass of wine. This is entertainment. The wine and entertainment pairing podcast. Welcome back everybody. This is Vintertainment, the place where wine and entertainment intersect. On most shows, we delude ourselves into thinking you want to hear what we have to say about different pieces of pop culture and art, but we know for a fact that you need to hear what we have to say about wine because man, wine is complicated. You think all you need to know is the name of four or five grapes, but wait, where was that grape grown? What were the soil types? What kind of climate? What kind of container was it aged in? Was it oak? it steel? Was it concrete? Was it amphorae? What the fuck is amphorae? Was it skin contact or no skin contact? What's the alcohol level? How long has it been in the bottle? It is a lot, folks. But all you need to enjoy wine is an adventurous spirit and an open mind. Explore this beverage that mankind has been making for thousands of years across nearly every culture. Wine is culture and history in a glass, just as entertainment is the same on a page screen. or record, which is why they go so goddamn well together. Now, please be sure to give this podcast a follow or subscribe and even better leave a rating and or review on Spotify or Apple podcasts or whatever platform you're listening to this on both the rating and a review. If you can be bothered with it, the more you do, the more the algorithm loves us and shows us to others who also listen to wine or entertainment podcasts. If you and also please tell a friend or family member if you think they'd enjoy this, send them to our podcast and to our Instagram, Ventertainment POD, Ventertainment Pod, and our home base of operations, which is Substack. You can find that at ventertainmentstudios.com. Substack is where you'll find a directory of all our episodes, directories of all the wine and entertainment pairings broken down by category, bonus pairings not featured on this podcast. articles about the wine and entertainment industries, guest collabs with other wine and entertainment writers, interactive polls, if you enjoy this podcast whatsoever, you simply must go follow us on substack at entertainmentstudios.com. It is the best place to get to know us better. So today we are here to talk about the album as it ever was. So it will be again by the Decemberists. Now, This is a band that was completely new to me, even though they've been around for two decades. The album dropped, this album dropped last year in 2024. I somehow got the first single, Burial Ground, dropped on me by the Spotify algorithm, and I absolutely loved it. It was this kind of old school boppy, but also a little dark and very earwormy. So I immediately started following the band on Spotify after listening to that. I'm like, okay, I want to check these guys out. but I did not jump into any of the rest of their music quite yet. Then the second single dropped an insane 19 minute track titled Joan in the Garden, which is an insane song to drop as your second single from an album. is what you get to do when you've been around for two decades. And this is kind of what you're known for is you can drop a 19 minute track and call it a single. And after that mother effort, I was hooked. So. You know, when the final album dropped, I listened to it front and back and I thought there just wasn't a skippable song on the whole damn thing. So then I started to look into the history of the band, listen to their previous albums. But that's me, Dallas. Had you ever heard of this band before I chose to talk about this album? What's your history with this? what were so you have any thoughts, any history, any, any, anything? So yeah, I hadn't heard of this album actually. And when you mentioned the album, I didn't realize it was a 2024 release. For some reason in my head, I thought it was going to be one of their earlier pieces or an older album. interesting. But I was familiar with the Decemberist, mostly because they've been around on the folk and indie scene for a while. I've done lots of the folk festivals and things, Telluride. And I'm pretty sure they've been on the bill at a number of festivals. I attended and if I'm honest, I have a vague memory of maybe leaving as their set began because I wasn't really necessarily intrigued at the time. And it may have been a long day, but it was one of those things. Dallas's history with everything is like, yeah, they didn't do it for me once upon a time. Like I walked away, I closed the book, I turned the movie off. I something where it's like, didn't blow me away. I'm like, Jesus, you're such a customer. But you know, when I do circle back, I you know, I'm never judgmental going in, I experience first and then I make the judgment. So circling back around to the December is this time, I checked out that final song first, actually, I listened to the last. That's also a thing I do when I'm trying out new music or albums or stuff. I do this whole listening party thing by myself sometimes when I find a record. But I will go to the final song and listen to that first Because that gives me sort of a destination for an album a trajectory and that final that final fucking song is So Dallas it's so sort of That's the 19 minutes I can take all this it is just this You know, it's what artists do when they stop giving a fuck in the proper sense, but only give a fuck about this piece of art. Like you can tell in this 19 minute piece of this song, it's just them doing their thing. And that's what I appreciate when it comes to new music or art or anything. It's just show me who you are. I don't know. Show me. You know, show me the show me the textures. Show me the. you know, show me the cracks, the fault, all of it. And I think what they do here is such a great job of like distilling what they've been over the past 20 years, because it also inspired me to go back and listen to a lot of their other music to see if I could see some of those textures. And it's this out this whole album, we'll get into it. But this whole album feels like it honestly like a distillation of 100 % of what they've done over the past 20 years. And that's coming from someone who just was inspired to go back and look at their camera. Yeah, great stuff. I mean, they were completely new to me. So this sound on this album blew, like it took me by surprise. It is, we're going to talk about this when we talk about the album more at length here in just a moment. But like, what do you call this genre? What exactly do you call their sound? And I immediately picked up on the Americana elements that are in this album, which are interesting because apparently the Americana part came later in their career. They really started as like, a lot of people claim that their sound originally was a British folk revival in terms of sound in their early albums. And it's funny because 19 minute songs are like 10 to 15 minute songs were where they started. It was like they were doing it right from the fucking get go. That was their thing. Like half their albums were always these, you know, songs that had movements, right? So they were broken down into like three or four smaller movements. It gives it real quick. It gives if anyone is familiar with sort of just musicians in general, there's this concept of like jam bands, which is essentially when you get disparate sort of artists who come together and kind of just meander through music and things sort of formulate a structure afterwards. But because of that, you get this almost weird synergy that it just kind of seems like it's just random. And a lot of their songs do seem a little random, but of course, there's great musicality that brings everything back. So I did get the sense that their early stuff was more sort of jam bandy, bandy, meaning you had these sort of artists who together and just worked it out as they went along, which is sort of, you know, it is it's a beautiful thing. I mean, it's a sort of improvisational to a certain degree. But that was my sense of their earlier work. Again, I could be completely wrong. They could have been very intentional from note one. Right, but the sound is something that can be a little hard to peg down in terms of like easily encapsulating because every album does a few different things every single time. Now, the one thing that this band is known for is they rarely do music. There's an element of pop in everything they do a little bit, a little bit of indie rock, a little bit of pop, a little bit of originally it was more British folk. And then in their later albums, they kind of switched over to Americana. So American folk. country blues, like a lot of influences started coming in from that end of the spectrum. And what they often do lyrically in like what these songs are about, they tend to be very narrative, like fictional protagonists telling a story of some kind, right? So like old school folk music used to do. Right, unlike pop, which is always like more introspective, more like, I'm talking about me, right? I'm talking about my relationships and love life and... struggles and what I think about myself, whether I think I'm wonderful or messy or terrible and different songs for all those different feelings I have about myself, but they're often about the artist. And for them, yeah, they're more narrative. They're more like, we're just telling some weird ass folk tale in this song and going to town with it. That definitely for sure. They do have that folk element in the proper sense, but they also do sort of a tone poem kind of approach, which is basically similar to the folk treatment. For instance, there's a song called William Fitz William Fitz William, which I am willing to bet any amount of money, any amount of money that that song came about simply as an excuse to use the name William Fitz William in a song. 100%. And it works, it works. But that's the beauty of having talented musicians who can sort of improvise their way through narrative, song and through structure. And they do it so seamlessly. do think their core is Prague light rock, for lack of a better term. It is because of that ability of them to kind of just play with structure and tonality and that sort of meandering kind of thing. I mean, we get a 19 minute song for God's sake, you know, so and also each song seems to kind of build on the idea, kind of build the sort of the the whole of this album and so that you are kind of rolling toward that final 19 minute song so that when you arrive there, you're kind of ready for it. Like you're I'm ready. 19 minute song when I get to the end of this double a double album. So yeah, I think the area that Americana that prog rock thing, it's it's it's all in there. You can see their influences, which is also a testament to their ability, because unfortunately, sometimes artists lead with their influences and they just seem like watches. But these guys seem to weave them almost effortlessly so you can identify the influences. But it's not sort of the the tent pole, structure of the song. Right. I mean, you do search a little bit for the influences, right? Because even for me, Americana is like one of those kind of catch all phrases that isn't too specific. You have to dig a little deeper to find out what exactly from Americana, right? Like and so I'm like, OK, this the word that popped into my head was Americana first, but almost because it was so broad that it allowed to be a catch all while I kept listening to the music and being like digging in deeper and being. So what is this music? What what what is it to me? What do I think they're drawing on? But we'll get to what the band says their main influences are, which surprised me only because I'm mostly unfamiliar with their main influence. Is someone who everyone knows of, I know of. I'm sure I've heard their radio hits, but I've never listened to them. So I'm like, ooh, okay, this is why that eluded me. Okay, cool. So before we get to that, let's talk about what we're drinking with this album, with hints of what we're drinking. Because we do a little hint. upfront. See if you can guess what kind of thing we might be drinking and then we will reveal it at the end. So for me, the Decemberists have the sound it's equal parts celebratory and melancholic. You know, it's equal equal parts like light and boppy but then it's got this darkness to it where it's like a lot of the stories don't end well. A lot of the stories aren't about just the pure celebration or there's always a little bit of like this. I think you called it meandering. There's this meandering just sort of being a little lost and just sort of wandering through the world and wandering through the trials and tribulations of the world. I think melancholy is a good word for it. So it's equal parts elegant and heavy, dark and light. It's also a crossing of these different musical influences. So I chose a wine that's known for its bold yet gentler slash smooth profile that often has some challenging characteristics mixed in there. and is a crossing of two well-known grapes. So was also a blend of two well-known, you know, other genres, right? So crossing those two grapes. Now that wine is not an American grape or even an American wine. So I also thought about how heavily steep this is in Americana and country and blues and those types of influences that this particular album seemed to be. So I also have a backup wine that is another darker yet lighter medley that is made from a grape. that is all the main, that is all, it's all the American varieties. So it's not a Vitis vinifera. It's a Vitis vinifera blended. And Vitis vinifera is the European grape salad. Like all the fine wines of the world are made with Vitis vinifera. But then there are other types of grape vines that are out there that are native to America. And this one is a blend of like all of them. It's like four different American vines plus Vitis vinifera, all hybridized together, all crossed together. So a splash of European in with all this American stuff. So much like this album, which is predominantly I feel like this one's more steeped in Americana, but it has some of their old like British folk revival sound in there as well. That final song, Joan of the Garden, that 19 minute song, it's about Joan of Arc, which is a very European thing to sing about. So but this wine, the reason it's a backup is it's essentially only available from one place and one place only one winery. So I wanted to make sure that I only use it as a backup pairing. But when I reveal these wines, and if you're interested, I'll be sure to let everyone know where you can find that one, if it's easy for you to get to. And then the other one is gonna be the broader, much more like most people are gonna be able to find this type of wine, if not this specific wine. So that's why I had to this time, I didn't wanna zero in on something that was that hard to get. So how about you Dallas, what are you drinking? Let's see. Although this album seems distinctly American, because it is, and at its core, America even as a concept has very distinct and acute British or European themes running through it. Although I can say that this album is distinctly American. I did not go with an American wine. I went with a wine that complemented the almost spontaneous improvisational feeling of the album. And when I say that, I don't mean that the final mastered version is some sort of meandering concept. I simply mean that it feels as if the creation of these songs was heavily spontaneous and improvisational. And then form came from that. I went for a wine that complimented or mirrored the sort of native feeling of this record. And when I say that, mean, in the hands of these artists and these musicians, everything they're doing feels like something they've been doing for a long, long, long time. You just feel like you're in mastered hands that know what they're doing. It's almost second nature. So that's what I mean when I say native. So The artist, the album was also released, the artist sat on for a while. So another texture I was thinking about with the pairing was, I kind of wanted something with a spontaneous fermentation that was sort of, had a very long tradition at its core. So I did go with something that was spontaneously fermented and is noted. and stored underground for a while before it's released. It is also stored in concrete vats on the palate. is structured with a firm sandy textured tannins. It has a bright sort of acidity. It is juicy and lots of hints of plum too. So really robust core flavor. so. it's definitely. Okay, cool. You know, when you said underground, I was thinking of the underground and for a for orange wine that is so common. Well, in Georgia, and whatnot. And by the way, I mentioned what the heck is am for a earlier their clay vessels that are very traditional underground clay vessels that orange wine has traditionally been made in for her. on to that thought when we get to the lines. Okay, okay, a red wine in underground M4A. Here we go, here we go. Maybe, we'll see. Or maybe Georgian, a red Georgian. Ooh, okay, cool, cool, cool, All right, so a quick history of this band. We're gonna do this briefly. We're not gonna go too deep into history. Everyone can go look up Wikipedia and see what this band has done, but we're gonna hit the highlights just so we have some context for this conversation. So, the Decemberists were founded by leading man, After he left his first band, Tarkio in Montana and moved to Portland, Oregon. There he met Nate Quarry, who introduced Molloy to Jenny Conley. They had played together in the band Colobo. And the three scored a silent film together first before actually founding the Decemberists. Playing a solo show prior to meeting Quarry, Molloy met Chris Funk. Funk was a fan of Tarkio and played pedal steel on the first two Decemberists releases, not... quote unquote, officially becoming a member until the third album. Now, other members have been rotating on and or for live touring purposes only, though John Moen became the drummer starting in 2006 and has remained the drummer until the present day. So he's the last of the more or less core group of the Decemberists. The band's name refers to the Decemberist revolt in 1825 insurrection in Imperial Russia. Malloy has stated that the name is also meant to invoke the quote, drama and melancholy unquote of the month of December. It should also be noted that Morrissey is one of Colin Malloy's chief influences. He has a tattoo dedicated to Morrissey and even released a solo album at one point called Colin Malloy Sings Morrissey. So he says Morrissey is like one of his greatest influences and that that what I mentioned earlier I've never listened to Morrissey like to Morrissey. Yeah, so I've never listened to a full album of Morrissey I've never been through like any sort of discography So I'm sure I know I've heard songs from Morrissey like I know they're hits I know they're out there but if you asked me what which songs were Morrissey's and what style is he what kind of musician is he? could not tell you jack shit about it. Like not one thought. I know from a top of my head standpoint, I know nothing about Morrissey. So I think that's why I could not make any connection between Malloy and the Decemberists and Morrissey. But maybe there are some great connections there. I could not tell you folks. So go listen to the Decemberists and you let us know. I'm gonna go listen to some Morrissey after this though now I'm intrigued. So the Decemberists. First EP was called Five Songs and was exactly that, self-released in 2001. The members at that time played for several hours in a McManaman's hotel the night before to raise the money to record in the studio the next day. This originally served as a demo tape and the five songs on it were recorded in under two hours. So speaking about that, I'm sure they had those songs ready to go. were playing them live probably just the night before. But speaking on that improvisational, like they're used to doing these things quickly, right? They're used to like getting in there and getting out. They know their lanes and other angles, yeah. Yes, they then released their first three solo albums on indie labels before releasing their fourth on a major label, Capitol Records. The album was called The Crane Wife and is still considered one of their most critically acclaimed. Additional albums occurred throughout the OOs in the 2010s with their sixth album, The King is Dead, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, the first album of theirs to do so. And that's kind of impressive for any sort of indie-ish band to just be number one on the Billboard charts. And this would be 2015. Now, this was the beginning of the December's, The King is Dead, that album that made number one on the charts. That was the beginning of the December's segueing from the British folk revival sound to Americana, the deeper roots in blues country and American folk music. It should also be noted that probably one of the reasons this 2015 album hit so hard is that the Decemberists had just had two sitcom appearances the year before. They did first on The Office in their final season where Dwight Schrute and his family on their farm all sing Sons and Daughters from The Crane Wife in this big performance. And it was kind of highlighted as like the best part of that episode when it aired. And then on Parks and Rec, same creators of The Office that went on to do Parks and Rec. So they were plainly Decemberist fans. And this is where the band action. Yeah, that makes sense. That sort of juggernaut number one Billboard debut makes so much sense now because that is the greatest marketing you could hope to have had in the 2014s is to have placement on the top two sitcoms on television. So bravo, whoever came up with that. So yeah. the creator, because he liked the Decembrists. So they had worked together in the past and he was a fan of the band. So he had Dwight and family sing one of their songs and everyone was like, what was that song? And of course looked up the Decembrists and then in Parks and Rec, the band actually played at one of the episodes where it was like this big festival in the park and like they sang one of the custom songs there. So, and I remember the Parks and I remember actually both of them, because I've seen both shows front and back. I did not watch them when they were airing originally, I've seen them all on streaming since. And those episodes all dropped. I believe the Parks and Rec one dropped in April 2014. So it was roughly like a year later that then the album dropped, but people knew who they were by then, I think much more than they did prior to. Now, the album that dropped before their most recent one dropped all the way back in 2018 with the new poppier sound, including several synth based compositions, which they'd never really used before, inspired by New Order and Depeche Mode. The band didn't announce a hiatus or breakup or anything of that nature after the 2018 album, but they weren't sure what else they had left to do. And outside of some remote performances during the pandemic, they'd been quiet for the past six years, which is right around the time. Go for it. Sorry, go for it. I was just going to, I'm going to wrap this up, which is right around the time that I was getting serious on Spotify with, finding new bands. So they were in this sort of dead zone of not releasing anything just as I was opening up my algorithm, like actively making the algorithm work for me rather than vice versa. I was getting out of my teenage music listening years, which I, which was all I had been listening to like my adult life. And I was like, okay, I kind of, you know, I grew up, my teen years were the nineties. So eighties and nineties music, I had those down pat, but you hit the OOs and the 2010s, they were blind spots. They were black holes for me. I knew nothing about what had been coming out during those years. So this was right when I was like, I need to find. And then of course, even going before the eighties, like going into the sixties and seventies was also somewhat of a, like I love Genesis. love prog rock, but there was still a lot of music from those eras that was unknown to me. So I was really opening up my algorithm and here were the Decemberists. Releasing jack shit nothing during those years. So I think that's a big part of why they were such a blind spot for me for so long But anyway, you were about to say Yeah, so part of that hiatus was that Malloy, Malloy, that yeah, Colin, he and his wife, who I think is an illustrator, started working on a book series that they really sort of dug into. And curiously enough, there's a quote, and I'm going to butcher it. So it's not a direct quote. But he said in terms of the creation of this album, he sort of went back to similar to what I do and I think most creators do you have your catalog and your cache of notebooks when you get some source of inspiration you write it down and then we'll leave it so he did that thing where he started sort of reviewing some of these textures text you know themes and was like okay I think I've got something here so apparently he called the band members once or twice the first time they were all like and the second time they all got together and that's you know how they got the sort of impetus for this this this album and I actually let's just go ahead and get to get into the discussion. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead do it. I'm curious as to you know, you said you hit that first song and that's the thing that did it. What about that first song or technically the last song in the album? What about those two songs sort of hooked you I suppose is the question. the first song had this old school beboppy-ness to it, right? I mean, it felt like a lost monkeys or a Beatles song or something like that. that's so good. Sorry, I'm gonna stop you. The monkeys when I was writing down, you know, sort of the crotic comparables in film and television guys, you have to come up with a comparable when you're trying to sell something. So it's basically the monkeys meets x, and z. And for me, the monkeys, the energy of these guys was very sort of monkey adjacent for me, because there is a playfulness. But there's a you like we were talking about, there is that darkness, you know, they have this sort of darkness to to a lot of their stuff as well. But there's a a life kind of boppy monkey energy to a lot of their songs too. So sorry, I'm glad you brought that up, but go on. land The and the burial gown They funded the aerial tour down my merry-go-round This world's all wrong So let's go where we belong Pack up, So that kind of boppiness, but then of course, when you listen to the lyrics, it's not really a lighthearted song. This world is all wrong, so let's go where we belong. Pack up the stereo, meet at the burial ground. It's like, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute. I think one of the last lines, there's a slight tweak to the lyrics when he sings it one last time, the refrain, and he's like, contract malaria, meet at the burial ground. And you're like, well, okay. there was this element to the song where it's like, it's so earwormy. It's so monkeys like catchy. It's so like of this older time that they're pulling from. And then there is that, that sat, that darkness that kind of of comes with all their songs. And I appreciated both. And then, I was humming that song for just a obscene amount of times after listening to it. So I was just like, okay, these guys, I don't know what else they do. Like I hadn't listened to any other songs yet. So I didn't know what their range was, but I'm like, but that's a banger. I really like that one. And then when the very next song they dropped was the fucking 19 minute Joan of Arc, Joan in the Garden, with six minutes of ambient noise, you know, as part of it, which makes, at first I was actually a little, I thought it was a bit of a cheat to make a 19 minute song where six minutes is like this not quite music part of it. And I was like, is that, does that really count? But then when I realized what the song was about and what the structure was and what it was doing with that. theme and with this character and like you're basically in this part where she's like hearing the angel voices and like you know going through her sort of like mental breakdown I think. I'm like, this works really well. This is smart. But it was still a 19 minute song that every part of it was intriguing and also kind of weirdly earwormy even then. So I was like, come on, that's awesome. Like it's rare to come across that in a band. And so those two things, just like, after that, I was like, I'm here for it. I need to know what else you've done, you know, and what this album is going to be. You know, for me, I would describe this album as gallows humor. If you guys are familiar with Gallows humor, it's just dark humor meets sort of a. Upbeat prog rock sensibility, it is it's tragic comedy. A lot of times I do this thing almost subconsciously where when I'm engaging with one piece of media, my mind tries to create a parallel in another medium. And for me, this album feels like a tragic comedy, a tragic comedy sort of series, for lack of a better term, where you get these crazy dark moments that just, I mean, they root you in the mud and muck of life. And the next moment is something that just bowls you over with laughter. And, you know, I imagine these guys are a lot of fun at a funeral on the back row. you because that would be me I'm because the entire time was going through my head is just picking up on the absurdity of things and finding it humorous. I'm laughing at the situation, but it's just sort of the tableau of it all. And that's kind of what this album is to me. It's like it's a tableau of tragic comedy, tragic comedy, tragically comedic moments. Yes. Yeah. Good way to put it. Yep. Yep. And the burial ground, that first song, it should be noted, it's one of the only songs on the album that has a co-writer of James Mercer, who is a guy from the shins. yeah. So it had the shins guy kind of co-writing with Malloy on that one in the band. So which again, that more classic boppy sound kind of works with with a shins. person involved. can see why and then but also with Gala's humor. I feel like those two would work well together. So but all the other songs just the December's is the only one that has a other co-writer. Alright, what did you struggle with? What did you want more of or not enjoy so much if there was anything? So I would say, mean, again, my enjoyment level on this album was actually pretty natural, organic, just not a skippable song on this fucking thing, which is always the sign, right? That's the thing where I'm like, OK. I never want to. I don't always remember what the order of the songs are yet. I haven't listened to it quite enough yet, especially once you get to that middle to. second, third, where, you know, it's always that middle part of the album where you always remember how it begins and ends. But then that middle section, you're like, OK, I roughly know what kind of song which songs are here. But I always forget the order and I never know what to expect next. But I would say the thing that his lyricism, I love his lyricism, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you what every song was about. Like looking up the lyrics and like poring over what exactly he wrote, because he has a very baroque way with words. Right? it's very, I think even one of the most, so I mentioned earlier how they rarely do songs that are introspective and classic poppy, like they're always more narrative. There is one song on here that is more classic poppy though, which is the All I Want, right? And which is that very almost typical, all I want is you, right? Like love song and like a love letter to someone or a love letter to some kind of relationship and about yourself and your relationship with them. And even like there's even he's the only one that in such a classic pop song was like, I think one of the lines is like, take me to your arbor. Right. And things like that. Like, and so it's just one of those things where no matter what the song is, no matter how poppy or whatever, when you really dig into the lyrics, you're like, I need to read these. I'm not sure I'm following what the song is about. Right. So I wouldn't I don't know if that quite qualifies as like I didn't struggle with it in terms of not like it, but I struggle with it was noticeable of yeah, well, and even getting ready for this podcast. I was like, I hope no one asked me what every song is about. I do not fucking know. Like some of these are opaque, man. I'm like, I could not tell you exactly what the story is. Like I would need to download the lyrics and just pour through them like poetry, right? And actually But even more than poetry, like, like open verse poetry almost where it's like it's telling a story, it's narrative, but like a ballad, you have to dig into what exactly it's saying. Yeah. Yeah. How about yourself? Me, think that is that that last thing you just sort of intimated or is the thing I love the most because it is, I guess it's sort of my, I want to say the bane of my existence, but I'm really, I've reached my capacity of pop music treatment of film, television, music, everything where it's just so on the nose, it's just right there for general audiences, and no one necessarily has to think about the metaphors or the imagery. And so when something does even a little bit, because it doesn't, it isn't that deep, you know, the lyric, the narrative that he's creating, but he does it in such a way that it does occasionally trip you up to force you to sort of write project yourself into it to wait a minute moment. Wait, what was that? What was that imagery? What was that thing? Right. And so that thing is just delicious for me, in general. So I thoroughly enjoyed it because of that. And like I said, that kind of inspired me to go back and look at some of their earlier work. And it is that sort of If you haven't yet, I do highly recommend The Crane Wife. It is really one of their, I think, best albums. I can see why it's one of their most critically acclaimed still to this day. That, especially for what you like in this album, listen to The Crane Wife. Yeah, that's that's one I was sort of waiting through. I listened to a couple on that one and it it does. It's that sort of I also like dissonance. I enjoy dissonance in. Yeah, you know, conceptually and musically, especially when it resolves. But yeah, that thing which you sort of had not an issue with, but you noticed was definitely one of my favorite things about the entire thing. And. If I'm going to pick a favorite song, because we do that occasionally, not always, but we do that, and today I'm going to do it, my favorite song on the entire record, without question, is Tell Me What's On Your Mind. You get these cold open steel chords and that driving bead and that sort of lilting narrative. It's just it is just a wonderfully, wonderfully solid song and probably the most radio friendly song on the album, if I'm honest. which is odd for me. But yeah, definitely probably my favorite. What about you? What are standouts for you? So. for me, mean, those two first two singles, I think just because they hit me first, will probably forever be my faves on there. So burial ground and Joan in the Garden. even hard pressed to pick one between I'm probably Joan in the Garden just because of how more rare that style of song is to come across. But burial ground like they're two different moods for two different times, you know, and so I think those two might be my top if I'm gonna pick something else though like if I'm like okay but those were the first two singles what else did hit you that much and I want to do so I do I really like All I Want Is You because I do think that it's just a lovely romantic af song in its way All the United Nations Couldn't feed my sensations Half as well as how you do It's very beautifully. It's very understated, unlike which the thing I like about this song is after all these other songs, which are very forceful in their way, like they're they're even the ones that are dark. I mean, they're dark in a way. I mean, like the Black Mariah and Don't Go Into The Woods. I mean, like they're eerie, like they're very on the nose. And then all I want is you is like one of the most understated songs, I think, on the whole album, where it's like it's really pulled back and it's really gentle. And I thought it hit in I think on the album too it hits in just the right spot where you need a break You need a moment to just be like, okay, okay We got we got one half of this album done and it's all this this this this this and now you're gonna give us something a bit different And then we're gonna jump back in but also America made me I really love the humor in America let's talk about America Made Me because I think it's probably the most anthemic song on the album. But I do think it is You know, you get these songs every now and then in retrospect. It's a song you grew up with or a song that's kind of ubiquitous. And it's a collective like misremembering of the narrative of the song. Or you sort of, you know, 20 years later, when you go back and review the narrative or the lyrics, it's like, oh, that's a really dire and dark song. I thought that was really uplifting. I think this song has that potential because. Yes. It's the kind of song people will remember loving in 20 years, but then once they review the lyrics again, they're gonna be like, okay It's very cynical, It's cynical and cynical. America made me in this point in time. And this is the guy, by the way, that during Trump's first administration wrote the song, Everything is Awful. That's right. And that was a bit of a hit. it was about the Trump administration. Like he's on record as being like, yeah, God only knows what he thinks now. I mean, this album dropped before the election. this was earlier in 2024. Maybe Colin is like, I've made my Trump song. Like it just replay that song. It's now it's like two times everything is awful. By the way, go listen to everything is awful. That's another earworm. And it's a perfect song for this moment in time. Everything is awful Everything is awful Everything is... What's that crashing sound? Follows us around That's the sound of all things good break everything is even more awful. I feel like he needs to write a sequel, like single of everything is more awful or something like of that nature. America made me is I think this album's everything is awful kind of a thing. It's sort of a little bit of a continuation of those themes in terms of kind of what like America's strengths, but also its weaknesses and its blind spots and its issues. And it's like the things like How did America make us? And what are we that America has made? The Africa made me a camp and cold little kickabout And look at me now I was primped and poised and shit out And to the Luvian lady You won't get far in a Yeah, it's a good song. Like Colin is not a I mean, he's still he's still an American. He still lives here. He hasn't fled or anything like that. So it's like he likes America in the way we all do. Like I'm still in America. I like I like America as what I want to believe it can be and what it has been at times. But like like all countries, we can we can be very, very bad. We can as I'm on mass, make very poor decisions and be delusional in the same way that becomes very harmful. And I think he's one of those people that it has no problem saying it when he feels it. it's what so you and I've discussed a lot of my writing lately, we're not going to get into specifics. But as a rule, anything I truly love, I have to be able to critique. And Colin, and I think he loves America, I get that from there is a a a beauty, a love, reverence for America and Americana and a lot of his stuff, but he also is critical of it for I think the reasons you're you're illustrating here and for me. In a lot of my writing, I am extremely critical of America, but I also love the fuck out of it because I mean, it that's the contradiction that unfortunately is the contradiction. Look at it this way, like when you have a true love of your life, you got criticisms through the roof. You probably live with that person. They've been a part of your life for a long, time, probably. annoys course. Exactly. And you know them so I mean, that's the thing you know them so well. Absolutely. You're like you can call them on their shit and vice versa. They can call you on your shit because they know you so well. So I feel like when you truly love something, you don't idolize them. You love them, right? There's a difference. You're not putting them up on a pedestal. You love them. And if you love something, you know them too fucking well not to criticize them and not to call them on their shit. Another note here. So Colin Malloy is also very vocal about neurodiversity issues. Apparently his son Hank is autistic and he's gone on record saying having grown up in a liberal household with strong democratic parents who were vocal and active in politics, that spoke to him. So he uses his platform to speak out a lot about neurodiversity. And I don't know, what's, before we get into the wine, I have one question. It's not a difficult question. I just don't know how to move into it. Maybe I should move into it with a statement. For me, this record is an essence record, and I'll explain what that is. You probably remember me a few years, Dave, doing this thing where I would turn off all the lights, put my phone in the other room. put on an album, like a seminal album that I'd never listened to before that's lauded as one of the greats, and I would sit, lie in darkness in the middle of the floor and just listen to the record. And I would always do essence records, which is essentially, if you could listen to one album from this band or persons, the canon of their work, what is that essence record? And This all started with Pink Floyd's Animals, which is, I think, the essence record of their entire career. I think this album, you know, for the Decemberists, even if they continued making another 20 albums, is probably going to be their essence album. And again, this is someone who doesn't know a whole lot about their past work, and you can't see into the future, but I imagine this is just a great distillation. of everything they've been toying with doing for the past 20 years. And if someone asked me for a sort of an essence of what they do, it would probably be this. Does that resonate with you? Does that make sense for you? I think so. And by essence album, just to make sure I'm on the same page with you, essentially a distillation album. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, perfect. Even yes, I think. I mean, this was the first one I listened to. But now that I've gone back and listened to a lot of their older albums, yeah, this, because I think this came late in their career and after a six year hiatus, not even a planned hiatus. When they came back, is like, refinding their voice. But you do that a lot of the times, you know, another artist who I love, Daniel Johns, who's an Australian guy. started in the band Silver Chair. Then he went on to found his other bands have only ever released one album at a time. But it's like he also did this band called The Dissociatives, another one called Dreams. And then he released a solo album recently, I want to say 2022 or 2023, maybe 2023. but when he released that, it And he had not released any music for a while by then either. After the dissolution of Silver Chair, he had kind of been a bit meandering and lost himself. And this album, I like it a lot, but it's funny. I listen to it and I'm like, I wonder what someone who never listened to him before would think of this album. Because it is almost a greatest hits in terms of sound. Greatest hits in terms of everything he'd ever experimented with and played around with and tooled around with successfully. And then here's a little bit of everything. Here is my career in a nutshell, in an album. And I feel like this is that for the Decemberists as well, where it's like, here's all the stuff we've been obsessed with for the last 20 years, at one point or another, all kind of mixed and matched. And here you go. This is us. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, good stuff. Sweet. All right. Let's get some wines, buddy. Get you some wine. So for me, you know, I've got to, so my main wine, the one that I'm going to say, this is the real true blue pairing because everyone can either find this or something very much like it. I went with, as mentioned before, this has this sort of darkness. This has a weight, but it also has a lightness. It has a celebratory quality to it. So I went with the grape known for both its darkness, but also it's a little more. It's dark and bold, but it's also a little more like red fruit versus black fruit. Sometimes it's kind of a bramble mix of like black and red. It's usually and then the tannins. It's not known for being rough tannins. It's known for having integrated and kind of smooth. Sometimes when made really well, it's velvety tannins. And that is pinotage. yeah. So I went with a twenty twenty. It's a pinotage called Taj. Pinotage from 2020. And it's called T-A-J, Pinotage. Now, Pinotage is spelled P-I-N-O-T-A-G-E, but this sort of gives you how to pronounce it. It's Pinotage, like the Taj Mahal. Right? that's why it's called T-A-G, yeah, P-I-J. Is there like, we are Pinotage. So it's Pinotage, it's a South African grape. It's a hybrid. They made it in South Africa, but it is Pinot Noir and Sinso. And Sin Sol, that is C-I-N-S-A-U-L-T, but it's French, you don't really pronounce the T, so Sin Sol. Pinot Noir and Sin Sol, now it's a fascinating grape to me because Pinot Noir and Sin Sol are both known for being these thin skinned, very light bodied, light in color, nothing like big and bold and dark, and yet somehow they bred this fucking Pinotage. And by the way, it's called Pinotage, Pinot obviously from Pinot Noir, and Sin Sol, was known in South Africa as ermitage. And so when they named this after the two, they named it Pino and Taj, so Pino-Taj together. Pinotage is also a great name for a detective duo. Ladies and gentlemen, Pinot and Taj. can see that. And this is from the Spartan in South Africa. And they made this great. They still call it a little bit of a work in progress to this day, as they're figuring out how best to make it. But I love peanutage. It's one of my favorite grapes. It can challenge people though, kind of like this music, where, you know, it's got what what I call a burnt rubber element to it in the same way that Riesling is known to have petroleum that can challenge people. Pinotage is one of the grapes. Carmignere is another one that is often referred to as having the smoke or burnt rubber quality both on the nose and on the palate. If done well, and it's balanced, it's not overpowering, and it is like a smoke element. It makes the wine more complex and it's beautiful. And this tage, this was $17, okay, for this tage. this is one of the wines, I'm doing an eight bottle Pinotage tasting that I'm preparing for our substack, by the way. They're all gonna be graded. It's a love letter to Pinotage. So I'm trying them all the way from budget to expensive and like single block vineyard type of a thing that's in the 50 to $60 range. This is on the low end. I'm pretty sure this is going to be like the winner of the low end of the spectrum where this it's balanced. It's beautifully complex that burnt rubber slash smoke is just gorgeously integrated. The tannins are velvety. This was one of my favorites so far. so I thought the pinotage, now just find a pinotage for yourselves guys. you find a, try to find a pinotage in that 20 ish dollar range. Pinotage rarely goes for a lot of money. It's not the most popular grape. You can find budget stuff in that like 10 to $15 range. Those can be a bit hit or miss. But if you can bump yourself past $15, this was 17. And I got it from curated wine shop here in LA shout out to curated wine shop here in LA. Everyone go visit curated. They are wonderful people. And we will tag them and all our Instagram posts and all that fun stuff. But they are selling this for 17. They still have some. And if you can bump yourself past the $15 mark, you're usually getting into really good peanutage territory. One of the wines I'm even tasting for this thing on our sub stack entertainment studios calm, by the way, go check out our sub stack and subscribe and One of the ones I also tasted was interestingly a carbonic macerated pinotage. So a, a bougerlaise nouveau style, pinotage. And that was fascinating because that burnt rubber slash smoke element and carbonic maceration, if anyone's had a bougerlaise nouveau, it's very light. And it's, it's a way of macerate, macerating the wine on the skins that gets a lot of color and very little less in terms of flavor and tannins and all that stuff. So it's a gentler, much more lighter bodied wine. And this one from for this peanutage that was carbonically macerated, that smoke element was dialed back to just being like this cola note, like this Coca Cola note on the back end. And that was the first time because Pinot Noir in the new world is often known for having a bit of a cola note, especially you get it from Washington or California. And that was the first time I'd ever noticed any similarity between Pinotage and its Papa Pinot Noir. Normally, I'm so baffled how those two grapes made the fucking peanutage. And that was the first time I was like, there it is. There's the fucking Pinot Noir note. I'm like, there. Yay. So that was that was exciting. Anyways, that's going to be a write up coming very soon. I still have four bottles to taste and rate. I'm taking my time with them because I'm drinking them solo. So it's like one one bottle every three days. So it's like it's taken me a little time to put this together. But I'm to do a love letter to Pinot Noir on our sub stack. Everyone go check out entertainment studios.com. you'd like to read that in the upcoming future now. my backup, because I wanted an American grape. And so this is a rare one, because to my knowledge, this is the only wine in the world made with this grape, you can only get it from one place. This grape might only be grown in this area, the Hudson Valley in New York. So this is from a group called Dear Native Grapes. And they're out of Hudson Valley in New York. They only do Native American grapes or heirloom grapes from America, which and this is a grape called le kernel le kernel Colo any L for you illiterates out there because of course kernel has no are anything like that. It's not kernel, right? So let kernel heirloom series Hudson Valley. This is pure Lekernel like kernel. It was actually created in the Rhone Valley as a hybrid across between Venice, Venifera and all the American grape varieties, which was vitis. So it's vitis vinifera, the European grape and the American species vitis labrusca, vitis rupestris, vitis raparia. And this was one I'd never seen before. Vitis lecaecomiae. So I'm sorry, lincaecomiae. It is L-I-N-C-E-C-U-M-I-I. Yeah. I mean, the C's could be S's too, I don't even know. But Linke Koum, and I'm trying to, I want to almost say it like Hawaii, you know, with the two I's on the end. like Linke Koumi A'i, I have no idea. But anyways, that's what we're gonna do. Yeah, please correct us. So it is a cross between two grapes called Villard Noir and Coders, C-O-U-D-E-R-C. Coderk. Thank you. Much better. Much more likely than my pronunciation there. So, and those two varieties, I'd never heard of them before, but apparently between those two varieties, they contain all these other species of vine. So, this one, the reason I thought this was a good, not only was it American, but it's also, it's got that, it's dark and light. It's got that little bit of foxiness that comes from a lot of American vine species. I that. I love that. When it's and again, like the burnt rubber when it's in balance with the other flavors, it's beautiful. And a lot of people are like, you should never have foxy flavors in wine because vitus vinifera never have or almost never have foxy flavors. So they're like, well, it's wrong. But is it it's like petroleum in Riesling. It's like burnt rubber and peanut, as in Carmen year, you just have to figure out how to do it in balance and make a good wine out of it. This is dark and light, great, nice acidity. it's got a lighter body than pinotage, but still it's got a little bit of depth, a little bit of darkness. It's got that little bit of Foxy flavor, which I think spices it up and just gives it that something extra extra where pinotage has the smoke. This has the Foxy and it's just, it's beautiful. Dear native grapes, dear native grapes.com is where you can buy this. They only made six cases period. What is wine? So six times 12 bottles. All right. I got two. I got two. So this is my first that I opened and then I got another one. Dallas, hint hint. Dallas, what you got? I went with the as we said, I wanted a wine that kind of mirrored that improvisational kind of thing. That's spontaneous kind of feeling, but which also felt like it was natively yielded. I'm just going to create that phrase right now. Curiously enough, this wine is done in the M4I tradition. It is grown in the Arini Caves in the Viyots Dzor, Armenia, which is thought to be one of the oldest grape growing regions and varietals in the world. And it's been carbon dated to substantiate that. It is also 100 % indigenous to this land and has a unique DNA profile that no one else can match. It is extremely the grape is extremely resistant to disease with a very thick skin. Of course, I'm talking about the Arrheni Noir grape. Let's see what else fermentation takes place in rough temperature controlled concrete tanks. That's right concrete using only natural yeast aging is in large local amphora known as Karasi, which are buried in the ground as per the ancient local traditions. which they still adhere to. And it's aged for another six months once it is removed. So I went with a 2020 Zora Karasi Arrheni Noir. Yeah, yeah. And it's kind of fantastic in terms of the flavor profile, you get the red and black fruits, you get all that floral, you get some of that earthy stuff, you get the herbal, it is very well structured, you get a sandy kind of tannin it's it's juicy like i said before it is very highly regarded and overall it's just really drinkable and it's a deep rich wine it's fantastic this is it here guys there you go yeah yeah so yeah that's I think your hand was covering the light. Try that one more time. There we go. Yay. and guys, I paired a Zora Voska hat, their native white grape, with one of the Carly Rae Jepsen albums. Yeah, the dedicated albums. You can go check out that episode if you want to hear about their white native grape that is very well known. It's funny too, it's interesting. I think it's pronounced, I've been listening to some Armenians pronounce the name of, I think it's Arani. rather than a rainy rainy even though it's E it's our a R E and I folks so our E knee noir but apparently every time someone more native says it it's it's closer to our ony I'm sure I'm missing some subtle distinction in pronouncing that but yeah if you you can't get a hold of this, but you should be able to find it in certain places, I would recommend a maybe Williamette Valley, Oregon, Pino like the domain Serene, Evan Stodd, Reserve or any of their brands. Very similar fruit profiles. Nice and earthy, smooth, silky textures, acidity balance, all that stuff, too. So, yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. And Arani Noir is often called. We should not. We don't like calling things like the blank of the blank place like because by Donnie about but it is often referred to as the pinot noir of Armenia. So very similar in a lot of ways. Awesome. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap us up here today. Thanks for listening, everybody. Once again, go follow us on Substack, which is entertainment studios.com. I know that doesn't sound like a Substack URL, but we have a nice new shiny. What do they call those things? A vanity URL, a vanity URL that Substack allows these days. So it's not a something.substack.com anymore. Now it's just entertainment studios.com. That will take you to our Substack where you'll find all our publications. Listen to all the past episodes if you want to there and write ups, including the write ups of Zora and that winery. And it gives, if you look up the dedicated post of Carly Rae Jepsen's album where I did the Buska hat, I also did a big write up on the winery so you can get their story by going there. So find us there everybody. We hope to see you there and go listen to the Decemberists and go listen to this album especially. I think start here. Don't start fast, start at the end and go backwards. I think that's a lot of fun. We fell in love, I fell in love with it. Dallas at least enjoyed it and quite appreciated it. And that's rare for him, so that is something. You should all, I appreciate it, you should all appreciate it as well. Thanks for listening, we will be back in one week with another wine and entertainment pairing for your entertainment. Take care until then, everybody, ciao for now, survive the weekend, we'll see you next week.