“E time we finish a record I feel like, ‘Wow, that’s it, that’s all the gas in the chamber,’” says The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy. The Portland, Oregon quintet released I’ll Be Your Girl in 2018, then six years slipped by before the arrival of their superb ninth album As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again. Meloy has hardly been slothful, though, writing children’s books and composing music for stage and screen.
“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always needed to create something,” he says. “Even if I was living in solitude, an anonymous, unknown person, I would still be making shit. I would be writing songs, writing stories. I think that’s something I’m just built to do.”
Despite that incessant creative itch that needs scratching, Meloy never…
