It sounded like a perfectly dark, gruesome way to spend the Friday before Halloween, so my wife and I headed to The Starry Plough in Bekeley. (Spending an evening listening to musicians sing about people killing each other was actually her idea, which is just one more reason that I love her.)
Perhaps no band’s lyrics better lend themselves to pseudo-academic analysis than those of The Decemberists. The Annotated Decemberists is an attempt to puzzle through the Portland, Oregon,…