'The Infanta,' the thunderous opening track on the Decemberists' fluid and predictably studious Picaresque, rolls in like a ghost ship at 40 knots in a hail of cannon fire with a mad English professor at the wheel. Colin Meloy and his esteemed West Coast colleagues have no qualms about beginning their third full-length record with a processional about a child monarch, and it's a testimony to their talents as orators and interpreters of both the absurd and the mundane that they continue to assimilate more fans than they alienate. While Picaresque follows its predecessor's -- the treacly Her Majesty -- predilection for seafaring and mythology, its boot-covered feet are more firmly planted in the present, resulting in the group's most accessible -- and decidedly upbeat -- product to date. The rollicking '16 Military Wives,' the aforementioned 'Infanta,' and 'The Sporting Live' (which comes dangerously close to Belle & Sebastian's 'Stars of Track and Field') help balance the spooky atmospherics of more reserved cuts like 'From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)' and 'Eli, the Barrow Boy.'

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George Benson In Flight. The Decemberists have always excelled at midtempo British folk-inspired dream pop, and Picaresque is no exception, as the brooding 'We Both Go Down Together,' which sounds like a mist-drenched Pacific Northwest rendering of R.E.M.' S 'Losing My Religion,' and the wistful 'Engine Driver' rank among the group's finest offerings. The album concludes with the diabolical 'Mariner's Revenge Song,' a Tin Pan Alley dirge/operetta reminiscent of Kurt Weill's 'The Black Freighter,' and the brief but intoxicating 'Of Angels and Angles,' a solo Meloy ballad celebrating the holy trinity of nautical lore: love, drowning, and death. ~ James Christopher Monger.