Honorable mentions go to:
• Lungs by Florence + the Machine
• The Vanishing Sessions (B-Sides Part I) by Sarah Fimm
• Them Crooked Vultures by Them Crooked Vultures
• The Knot by Wye Oak
The Hazards of Love tells the story of a woman named Margaret and a forest dwelling shapeshifter named William. They met one day while Margaret was out riding and came upon him as an injured fawn. She dismounted to help him upon seeing him, and while attending to him, night fell and he turned into a man. Immediately smitten, they fall to the forest floor and have sex.
Margaret goes back to her village afterward, but she is pregnant and leaves months later, when her bump starts becoming too large to ignore. She seeks out William, and when she finds him, they profess their love to one another. They have sex again, but are caught by the Queen -- William's adoptive mother (she rescued him from the river as an infant) and personification of the forest -- and she forbids him seeing Margaret further. She says this in my favorite song, "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid":
How I made you, I wrought you, I pulled you
From ore I labored you
From cancer I cradled you
And now, this is how I am repaid
This is how I am repaid
Remember when I found you
The miseries that hounded you
And I gave you motion, anointed you with lotions
And now, this is how I am repaid
This is how I am repaid
William, though, is in love, and begs her to have one night of total freedom, and he will serve her for the rest of his life. This, of course, is a lie, and he plans to run away with Margaret. The Queen, after consideration, says it's a deal.
We are introduced to the Rake in the next song. He was once married, and enjoyed the first few months of marriage, when he was getting lots of sex, but then his wife started having children, and then died while having her fourth. Being a sociopath, he goes about murdering the three children he's been left with, and sets out to find new women to have lots and lots of sex with. He eventually discovers Margaret the same day that she and William are going to run away, and abducts her.
He throws her on his horse, and gallops away. They eventually come to the Annan River, an uncrossable river, and the very same body of water that the Queen rescued William from as an infant. The Queen, not being as stupid as William wished she was, cuts a deal with the Rake, telling him that since Margaret is going to steal her baby from him, she'll fly him across the uncrossable river. She also basically says she doesn't give a damn what happens to the girl, and the Rake is pretty much free to rape her to death, eat her flesh, and sew her skin into his clothes, and if he's feeling magnanimous, to do it in that order. They strike a deal, and he is taken to the other shore, where he finds a place to do his heinous deeds. However, the ghost of the Rake's murdered children reveal themselves at this point, and wreak their vengeance upon him.
Meanwhile, William discovers Margaret's gone, and tracks her to the riverbank. Desperate, he pleads with the river to him cross. He promises that if it will just calm its currents, he will return later, and it can claim his life as its reward. It allows him to pass, and he arrives in time to save Margaret. He presumably kills the Rake as well, but that isn't made clear. Once reunited, they make their way back to the river and attempt to cross, but the river is intent on recouping its debt. Knowing the river has the best of them, they marry themselves in its currents, with the waves as their only witness, and once wed, they give in to the inevitable, allowing the river to claim them as its payment for William's earlier promise.
It's a simply amazing album that I listened to non-stop, for weeks. It was also one of the albums I took on the road trip to South Carolina in July, and Eliza and I probably listened to "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid" a half-dozen times in addition to the three or four times we listened to the album straight-through. I'd kind of forgotten about it after that, though, but she recently mentioned listening to it again on Facebook, so I gave it another listen and was blown away all over again. You should really seek out a copy by whatever means possible.
Tags: albums of 2009, review, sarah fimm, the decemberists, the hazards of love
Current Music: "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid" - The Decemberists
